Shane Van Boening
Following a 2020 COVID cancellation, the 16th edition of the American 14.1 Straight Pool Championship returned to action today in Virginia Beach VA at Q Masters Billiards in the fabulous spectator friendly 15 table tournament room. The 2019 tournament was also played at this venue. One of the strongest fields ever assembled for this event were on hand to kick off the 5 day event at noon on Tuesday, all vying for a piece of the $43,000 purse. There is an additional prize awarded to the player who achieves the highest run of the tournament. Any player who has an active run of 100 or more when they close out their match can continue shooting in an attempt to post the high run.
The 48 man field was seeded into 6 levels then split into 8 flights; each flight contains a player from each level (total 6 players per flight). The top 8 seeded players are Shane Van Boening, Ruslan Chinahov (2019 champion), Joshua Filler, Thorsten Hohmann, Fedor Gorst, Darren Appleton, Max Lechner and Albin Ouschan. Each flight will play a round-robin format with races to 125. The top 3 players in each flight then advance to the 24 man single elimination phase of the tournament. All flight winners will receive a first round bye.
Of the top seeds, only Van Boening, Lechner and Ouschan got through day 1 without a loss. Other players that went 2-0 today were Bader Alawadhi, John Morra, Alex Pagulayan, Alex Kazakis, Mieszko Fortunski, Mario He, Mika Immonen, Wiktor Zielinski, Corey Deuel, Aloysius Yapp and Ralph Souquet.
The spotlight player of the day was clearly Van Boening. This is the first time Shane has ever competed in this tournament. But don’t let that fool you – he can flat out play 14.1 as his record in this discipline over the past several years clearly bears this out. He faced Dennis Grabe in his first match where he executed a 94 ball run in the 4th inning to assume control of the match then closed it out in 5, 125-39. He then faced Lee Van Corteza in his second match. Lee Van cleared the first rack, but missed the breakball to open up the second rack. Van Boening stepped to the table and calming ran 15 racks totaling 210 balls to take the game while setting an all-time tournament record of balls run, and in the process treated the capacity crowd to a memorable experience. The previous record was held be Niels Feijen at 176. Shane’s run ended when his position for the breakball of the 16th rack left him with an impossible cut.
Van Boening wasn’t the only player producing high runs on Tuesday. Mika Immonen checked in with a 182 in his second match. That effort was followed by Wiktor Zielinski with a 194 in his match with Fedor Gorst. The run ended on a makeable breakball that failed to find the pocket. The combination of high level 14.1 talent along with the superb playing conditions provided by Q Masters virtually ensures the high runs to continue.
Play resumes Wednesday at noon EST as 2 more round-robin matches are played. Free streaming is available on the American 14.1 Facebook page, the AZBtv Facebook page and from Istreampool on Youtube. Online brackets are available at Cuescore.com. All matches are played on Diamond Pro-Am tables with Simonis 866 cloth and Predator balls. Corner pockets are 4.5” and the sides are 5”.
