Saturday 31 January 2015

Ruslan Chinakov Wins Straight Pool Challenge



By: Markus Noé

The George Fels Straight Pool Challenge has just ended at the Derby City Classic and Ruslan Chinakov has come through as the new Champion. In the final he faced Jayson Shaw, who earlier in the tournament set the all time high record run of 227. As he does in all the disciplines Shaw brings his own style to straight pool and despite being effective, most would classify his gun slinging ways as unconventional.

Going into the final the commentators had Chinakov as a slight favourite because of his more conservative pattern play and overall experience. Chinakov had the high run in this match of 56 and a few 20's and 30's after that, mostly off of some errors from Shaw. For those who are unfamiliar with Shaw's style until today, most would think that his fast pace and fearless approach was his downfall today losing 125-50. However it was this same approach which allowed him to get the final and have his record breaking high run.


Besides Shaw's high run, the other story of this tournament was John "Mr.400" Schmidt forfeiting his match against Shaw after leading 117-60. From what I heard he quit after a disappointing break shot, however without him coming out himself and saying exactly why, none of us know for sure. Through threads on Facebook "Mr.400" has expressed that prior to this forfeit he had been having a bad week mentally and was in no form to be competing publicly. Still with only 8 balls left to secure victory his move here has many scratching their heads. He was fined $300 for forfeiting the match and has been getting beat pretty bad on the forums.

The 9 Ball Division is the only event left for this years Derby City Classic. It will be streamed live all day, so make sure to go to Accu-Stats and buy the pass. Also for Canadian fans, Alex Pagulayan is still going in the 9 Ball Division and even though it is still unconfirmed it looks like he has secured the $20,000 Master of the Table Bonus.  Check back at Cue Sport Nation for the final results from the 9 Ball.


 

No comments:

Post a Comment