Archer Cup Day 1: Dechaine Suffers Early Loss/Archer Eliminated

Unveiling of the "Archer Cup"

By: Markus Noé and Erik Hjorleifson

Archer Cup 

Today was the opening round for the highly anticipated Archer Cup at the Black Lake Arena in Thetford Mines Quebec. It was a day of upsets as some of the favorites to win this tournament were beaten early. First it was John Leblanc upsetting former World Champion Johnny "The Scorpion" Archer 10-8.

  In Archer's very next match he played young upstart Tom Theriault who has just been bumped up to professional status. In another surprise Theriault also got the best of Archer 10-8 to eliminate one of the favorites early on. 

Mike Dechaine playing Danny Hewitt

Mike Dechaine also suffered an early deafeat. This one was not as much as an upset as Archers losses because Danny Hewitt is a well known world class player out of Montreal Québec. Hewitt's lack of fear towards Dechaine was evident in this 10-8 win. Perhaps Hewitt was still confident from his 9-5 win over Thorsten Hohmann earlier this year at the Turning Stone Classic. Dechaine followed this loss with a win over Danny Ngyuen and his waiting for the winner of the match between Joey Cicero and Roger Doyons. 

Erik Hjorleifson will play Thorsten Hohmann tomorrow on one side of the final four winners bracket  and John Morra will play Danny Hewitt on the other side. Make sure to go to www.eventime.ca to watch the live stream and follow along with the brackets at www.compusport.ca

Scotch Doubles

Along with the Archer Cup singles tournament, most of the pro's also participated in a doubles event in which they were paired with a semi-pro ranked player. This division is a 9 ball winner breaks race to 9 format. As is usually the case in teams and doubles events, the performance of the weakest link is a very important factor.  Which makes the play of the semi-pro partners a strong determinant in the outcome of each match. 

Another factor is the chemistry of the team.  On day one it seems that friends Dany Nguyen and Eric Horth both from Montreal have a good vibe going. They had a notable win over Richer Francoueur and Dany Hewitt 9-5. Another Montreal pairing Yan Lalande and  Sylvain Grenier advanced to the final four with a win over Johnny Archer and Roger Doyon. Also advancing on the winners side were the teams of Hjorleifson/Nowlan and Morra /Cicero. Notables still alive on the losers side include Martel/Abrouq and Paradis/Crevier, play will continue on Sunday. Follow along on the fly at the Cue Sport Nation Facebook page as we can because we are both still in dealing with hectic playing schedules. 

Classique des Appalaches: Schedule, Dress Code and Stream

Friday

* Noon: -Open for practice

* 5 pm

- Skills contests qualifications

- Live stream begins

* 6pm: Press conference and unveiling of the Archer Cup

* 19h : - Skills contests players introduction

- Skills contests starts-mini tournaments (10$/persons)

Saturday

* 9 am: Tournament begin

* Noon: Players meeting

* 22h: mini tournaments (10$/persons)

Dimanche

* 9 am: Tournament resumes

* 2 pm: Hard-luck tournament begins

* 10 pm: mini tournaments (10$/persons)

Lundi

* 9 am: Tournament resumes

* 6 pm: End of tournament

Dress code

* No jeans, t-shirts, hats, or sneakers.

Skills contests qualifications

* If you want to try to qualify for the skills contests, qualifications will be held at 5 pm at the price of 25$

Hotels

* There are rooms availables at the Comfort Inn and the Balmoral. You must go trough our website (eventime.ca). We have reserved all the rooms to make sure of the availability for the tournament players.

* In the comments box; note your check-in and check-out date

Stream

* Thursday night there will be an exhibition beetween Johnny Archer and Thorsten Hohmann at 7 pm, and the unveiling of the Archer Cup, the press conference, and the skills contests will be free on the stream of Eventime.ca.

* Saturday, Sunday and Monday, the stream will be 10$/day or 20$/three days

Pagulayan Eliminated from Chinese Masters

Press Release

On May 7th, array of international stars gather in the first station of “the Grand Epoch City·Joy Cup”2015 World Chinese Eight Ball Masters. The former 9-ball world champion Pagulayan is challenged by folk master Shao Hongda at 19:00,and then a strong-strong dialogue begins. The match is forced to stop because of the time limitation after a disappointing draw 6:6. Thus the match goes into penalty kicks. Although Pagulayan ,who has a first try in penalty kick, shoots one ball into the pocket, off to the bad start,he could not accomplish the counterattack with 6:7.Therefore ,Pagulayan could not gain the qualification to top 96.

Even though meeting some challenges, Pagulayan is still in good form for the match in the first stage 384 to 192(double elimination). However, the intensity of the match increases and his opponent is more competitive when the match comes to the second stage. Similar to the previous situation,he arrives at the playing field very earlier,from which we can see that he attaches great importance to this single-elimination match.

With seeded players,including Yu Ting,Qiu Paomou and Yang Fan,having already reached the next round,they are sitting in the side of the field and watch Pagulayan’s match just like his fans.Regrettably,Pagulayan does not do well in the match and makes a series of mistakes,thus leading to his missing the promotion opportunity.

Shao Hongda,the opponent of Pagulayan,is a typical 90s player.It is not hard to see his aggressiveness as a fresh man.Until the 7th set has been finished,Pagulayan still trail by one point,which never occurs in the previous matches.

Pagulayan is a big goof with the ability to charm everyone by his nature of entertainment.When he sees Yang Fan sitting in the audience during the match,he make his classic gestures to ask for his help.This pleasant interaction makes the audience burst into laughter.Once returning to the match,Pagulayan behave both calm and fierce,and his strong desire for wset is so memorable.Unfortunately,the result of the match has not been changed.

Pagulayan makes the score 5:4 after his difficult equalizer in the 8th set.But Shao does not give up any chance to counterattack.In the 12th set,no billiard ball is shot into the pocket after Pagulayan’s racking.He returns to his seat remorsefully and suddenly begins to hit himself on the head,which is exactly the same as the performance of O’ Sullivan in the world championship.And then Shao also makes some mistakes.Until the match is finished,the 6：6 draw does into penalty kicks.

Pagulayan is still struggling to explore the knack of penalty kick while Shao has already shot a ball into the pocket.In the exciting penalty kicks,a cannot help laughing scene appears--When the referee reports middle pocket,Pagulayan should immediately understand it even though his Chinese is poor,and correct it to the bottom pocket,making the audience burst laughing.After 5 rounds of penalty kick,both of them have already shot one ball into the pocket.Finally the match comes to an end with Shao’s shooting the ball into the bottom pocket.

With the love for the Chinese Eight Ball,Pagulayan dares to become a pioneers and joins in the largest Chinese Eight Ball League.Everyone of his match will be a classic that cannot be permanently altered.He never refuses to sign photographs and greet the fans,and he also give some helpful advice for the 15-year-old girl.There is no doubt Pagulayan is a perfect combination of billiards skills and personal quality.

The fail of this match does not means that Pagulayan has left away the field of Chinese Eight Ball.However,he will not stay away from the field permanently,because he is a real master !

Deadline For 10K Added Archer Cup Draws Near

By: Markus Noé

A week from today the festivities for another addition of the Classiques de Billard des Appalaches in Thetford Mines, QC will be underway. For those of you who are planing to participate in either the amateur or pro divisions the entry deadline is this Monday May 11th. This is a firm deadline with no exception as the organizers need these few days leading up to the event to make the tournament charts and post schedules.

Most of the Amateur divisions are filling up nicely. In the A and AA there are over 35 players registered in both the 9 and 10 ball. The AAA has 17 and the B division has over 30 registered as well. The semi-pro and the pro are still less than half full at the moment but I do expect them to get more entrants this weekend. Especially in the $10,000 added pro event in which there are only 14 registered at this time.

Here is the current list of players registered in the pro:

Luc Salvas
André Pelletier
Sylvain Grenier
Dany Normandin
Mike Dechaine
Johnny Archer
Francis Crevier
Alain Martel
Ashley Nowlan
Hohmann Thorsten 
John Morra
Mario Morra
John Leblanc
Tom Theriault

I can also confirm that Martin Daigle and my partner Erik Hjorleifson will be signing up for this event. If this division is able to get to 32 players it will payout the same as the most recent 128 player field at Turning Stone which was $8,000. As you can see regardless on how many more entrants there is, this field is packed with world class talent. For those who are not interested in playing there will still be some very entertaining matches to watch and will be worth the drive.

A reminder to all who are coming on the Friday night there will be a skills competition. For those that want to qualify you need to be there in the afternoon, all the details are in the poster below. For more information about signing up go to www.eventime.ca or contact Marco Sanschagrin directly on Facebook.

TvMike.tv to broadcast live national/international pool tournaments from Las Vegas NV.

Press Release       

Las Vegas, NV (PRWEB) May 07, 2015

TvMike.tv is proud to announce that we will be travelling to Las Vegas Nevada to produce NOT ONE, but TWO major Billiard events!!!!! This feat has never been accomplished in the history of amateur Pool & Billiards and we are extremely excited to let everyone know that both events will be available to you for FREE!! Tournament schedule as follows the Universal cues 2015 ACS Nationals LIVE from the Tropicana May 9th to the 15th and the 35th Anniversary of the VNEA world internationals LIVE from Ballys May 21st through the 30th of May. The coverage of these events would not be possible without the interest and support of both amateur billiard organizations.



TvMike.tv has produced multiple ACS State championships in the states of Illinois and Indiana in both 2014 and 2015. “Mike does a fantastic job with the production and commentating of the events and our players really enjoy every show” said John Lewis Executive director of the ACS. “We invited Mike to come produce our VNEA juniors tournament last year in Battle Creek MI and we were really impressed with his knowledge of our organization and we saw the results. When Mike provided us with the google analytics of how many people actually watched it was easy decision to work with him again on our nationals” – Brian Elliot Director of Marketing and Promotions – VNEA

“I really want to see how far this can go” said Mike Warden (aka TvMike) previous state level broadcasting efforts have surpassed 3,000 unique viewers over the span of the event. Doing competitions of this prominence and magnitude with the promotional marketing support of the leagues I wouldn’t be surprised to see the accumulated numbers over 10,000 viewers coming in from all over the world.”



Viewers can tune in to watch the broadcasts on any mobile device or computer with one click by visiting the channel located at http://www.tvmike.tv on the internet.



Mike Warden (TvMike) has been producing hundreds of live stream broadcasts of pool and billiards since 2010. The “Netflix of Pool” boasts a growing library of over 2,500 pool matches available to video subscribers. TvMike.tv has had over 76,000 unique viewers since Nov of 2013.



https://www.facebook.com/tvmike.tv

http://www.americancuesports.org - jlewis@americancuesports.org - http://www.vnea.com – Brian Elliot – info@vnea.com

Big Red Wins the 10 Ball Division at the Fargo Spring Shootout

By: Erik Hjorliefson

This past weekend Fargo Billiards one of if not the nicest room in North America held their annual Spring Shootout. There was three tournaments on the bill with the prestige event being a 32 player $90 entry 9 foot 10 ball tournament.  Also on the bill was a $60 entry 7 foot 8 ball tournament with $2000 added and an amateur 9 ball tournament limited to players with a rating of 5​5​0 or less in the extensive ​"Fargo Rate" system that has been developed by innovative room owner Mike Page.​  Apparently, we will soon be hearing more about Fargo Ratings, which are chess-like ​ratings for pool that rate players everywhere on the same scale.

Fargo Billiards features fourteen 9​-​foot Gabriels tables, ​6 Gabriels 7​-​foot tables and ​36​ Diamond 7​-​foot tables. The room also features a full service kitchen with endless choices and private function room equipped with lounge seating and po​o​l tables. If you are a fan of the game and are ever in the area this room is an experience that can't be missed.

The 9​-​foot 10 ball tournament began Friday night with the round robin portion of the tournament. The round robin would eliminate half of the field and would seed the remaining 16 players wit​h​ the low seeds playing the high seeds in the single knockout portion of the tournament. The field featured most of the top players from the Northern Midwest and Southern Manitoba. Tournament favourites included Lee Heuwagen, Fargo Billiards house pro Rory Hendrickson, Jesse Engel​, Taylor Anderson, ​ and Danny Olson. Berry Mclean, Felix Beardy, Jeff Clare and Mike Frechette headed up the hopes for North of the border. In the end I was able to come out on top with an 11-5 victory over Jesse Engel in the final.

Big Red

The ​7-foot table 8 ball division started with a healthy field of 64 players​,​ and Lee Heuwagen made a surprising early exit​.​ I spoke with him and he told me he has been spending long hours at work. On the winners side I made my way through to the final to play Midwest bar table legend Rory Hendrickson, Rory went on to claim the hot seat and eventually waited for the winner between myself and young up and comer Danny Olson. Olson advanced with a 5-4 victory and ​followed that by two more 5-4 victories to prevail over Hendrickson.

Results Amateur 9 ball

 ​1st       Darin Meyer    $600
​  2nd    ​ ​Lee Gray   $450
3rd  Dan Gu  $250
4th  Ryan Kingbird $175
5/6  Jimmy Williams, Wade Odegaard​  $100
​



10 ball
1st         Erik Hjorleifson $1400 + Entry to the CSI U.S.Open 10 ball championships
2nd        Jesse Engel         $850
3rd/4th Lee Heuwagen $500
              Danny Olson
5th/8th Jeff Clare            $200
               Rory Hendrickson
               Taylor Anderson
               Mike Frechette

8ball
​Danny Olson $1700 + Entry to the CSI U.S. Open 8 ball Ch​ampions​h​ips
​Rory Hendrickson           $1000
Erik Hjorleifson       $700
Prad   ​Rana              $400
Felix Beardy            $240
​Tyler Perry​ ​                  $240​

Asia Victorious in Dramatic Finale of AM8.com Queens Cup

In a roller coaster ride final day 3, a relieved Team Asia celebrates victory after a late charge by the Europeans & Americans

By: Charlie Williams

Photos courtesy Emille Soriano of Dragon Promotions

Manila, Philippines- Team Asia survived a dramatic comeback by Team West in the third and final day of the AM8.com Queens Cup. Asia’s foursome had led each day of the event and extended to a 3 match lead, but the European/American squad bounced back and swept Asia in the first three matches of Day 3. The 2015 亚美娱乐 AM8.com Queens Cup aired nightly on primetime hours of 6:00pm – 10:00pm on ABS-CBN Sports + Action channel. The 亚美娱乐 AM8.com Queens Cup re-ignited the greatest rivalry in women’s billiards April 16-18th, 2015 which featured champions vs champions as the best women from Asia will took on the best in the West! The 亚美娱乐 AM8.com Queens Cup was hosted by the award winning Resorts World Manila Casino & Hotel and sponsored by Andy Cloth , Aramith Balls, Viking Cue, with live streaming by Red Cube Productions. The Queens Cup is a Dragon Promotions production.

The day before, the Captain for the West made an near ominous prediction, “We started slow, but ended strong again. And tomorrow’s line-up is in our favor. We are already doing better than the last Team West from the first Queen’s Cup, so we know we are a different team. We can win”, said Ewa Mataya Laurance, skipper for the West.

Captain Laurance chose to put Karen Corr to start the day. Corr had been the best player of the entire event thus far, so this was a sound decision. Captain Amit put her hopes in Korea’s young Eunji Park. The last time the two had faced each other, Park had knocked Corr out of the US Open. Park and Corr dueled the first game in a cat and mouse game after Corr missed a golden chance to runout. Park played a great safety hooking Corr, but Corr came right back with a great kickshot. Park was forced to jump and made a good contact, and got a fortunate roll to re-safe Corr. Karen made a good contact but inadvertently scratched. Park took the game and the next jumping to a 2-0 lead, and things looked grim on the West’s side as they had also dropped the first match of Day 1 and Day 2. A miss by Park in the third game gave Corr a chance to get on the board. Things turned around with a break and run by Corr and suddenly the tide turned. Park continued errors as Corr came on stronger and eventually took the match with 4 unanswered racks. Asia 7 West 5.

The many faces of Karen. With the entire hopes of Team West upon her shoulders, The Irish Invader almost single handedly pulled off the impossible

Corr was put right back in again with her familiar partner of the past 3 days, Jennifer Barretta. They faced Park/J.Chen. Captain Laurance’s faith in the duo paid off in a 4-0 whitewash, and suddenly the West had come back to life! They were down only 1 match at Asia 7 West 6.

The tandem of Barretta and Corr turned out to be a good partnership during the Queens Cup

Corr was called upon one more time as she was placed in the first 3 matches as the anchor of Team West. This time would be the most challenging as she faced the #1 ranked player in the world in Siming Chen. Donned the “Most Dangerous Lady” in pool, Chen came out strong and making hardly an error, jumped to a 3-1 lead. Undeterred, the “Irish Invader” took each shot one by one and forced a final game to the cheers of her teammates. In the final game, a great break by Corr enabled a full clearance to not only defeat Asia’s anchor, but to level the series at 7-7! This was the first time in the Queens Cup that the West had won 3 matches in a row thanks to the Irish workhorse in Karen Corr. Karen would later gain the distinction as the MVP of Team West with 6 match wins.

Next in the triples, Captain Laurance would finally join in along with Villarreal and Corr. Asia’s Captain Amit, Jennifer Chen and Siming returned. The West’s trio was not able to put anything together, and not even Corr was able to carry the rest of her teammates in her 4th straight match of the day. Asia was able to stop the West’s momentum 4-1. The next match would add Barretta to her teammates in the 4-on-4, but the West was not feeling it in the big group matches unlike the day before where they excelled in the triples and quadruples. Amit was able to keep her team calm and led them to their own 2 match streak pulling away to the hill 9-7.

Singles was up next, and the West had Villarreal up while Amit had placed herself in this position. Villarreal had been on a hot streak during the first 2 days and next to Corr, was the second best player on the team. Also, the next match would be losing team captain’s pick singles which would mean that the West would be able to choose both players from the two teams. Likely this would be a re-match of Corr and Park from what Laurance had mentioned. And if the West would win that one, it would mean a score of 9-9 resulting in a 4 on 4 finale. So, the vital importance of winning this match was mountainous upon the shoulders of both players.

“If I lost that match I knew that it would mean we could very well goto 9-9 for a one match decider for the event. So playing Vivian was like the finals. There was so much pressure it was crazy”, said Rubilen Amit, captain of Team Asia. Amit would be declared the MVP of the AM8.com Queens Cup for her outstanding leadership bringing together 4 countries into unison. Plus her monumental contribution of 8 wins and 2 loss record, including going undefeated in both her singles matches. Amit has yet to drop a singles match in her tenure during her two appearances at the Queens Cup.

After making an incredible runout, Vivian misses an easy 9-ball.

With the whole continent upon her shoulders, the small in stature Amit came out big the first game with a break and run. An unexpected miss by Amit on the second to the last ball in game 2 breathed life into Villarreal and she tied 1-1. Amit struck back taking the next rack to hold the lead 2-1. Villarreal made some fantastic shots in game 4, playing fast and loose. She looked to have the game easily in hand when she abruptly missed the 9-ball! Amit took full advantage to take the game and placed herself on the hill 3-1, needing only one more game to finish the match. The final game saw Amit facing a difficult rack clearance, but possible to play nevertheless. The 2-time world champion held her nerve in check each shot, making the balls and playing good percentage position for the next ball. She shot herself out of each jam perfectly. Finally came the last ball of the event, an open 10-ball that was make-able but also one that could be missed, especially given what was at stake. With her teammates waiting, praying, and holding their breath on the sidelines, Amit steeled her nerves one last time and downed the winning ball. The ecstatic Asian champions all rushed into the arena to congratulate their captain and celebrate the hard fought victory that required three days of teamwork, discipline, and faith.