Matt Wrobel
There were a number of factors that worked to his advantage, but 22-year-old Matt Wrobel still had to do the work. He came into this past weekend’s (July 14) stop on the Garden State Pool Tour with only two sessions of APA pool league experience and only two previous cash-paying tournaments on his resume (he’d not cashed in either of them). Wrobel competed against four opponents (one of them twice), racing to 4 against three of them with Fargo Rates higher than his by 40, 121 and in his two final matches (hot seat and final), defeated an opponent, Levie Lampaan, whose Fargo Rate was 181 points higher. He played one straight-up race to 5 against an opponent whose Fargo Rate was just 8 points higher. Fargo Rate calculations that provide odds on a given Fargo Rate’s chances against another rate, indicate that were Wrobel to play 100 matches against Lampaan, he’d be expected to win just percentage points higher than 16 of them. He took care of two of them in a single weekend.
Another factor that certainly contributed to Wrobel’s success was the small field on hand for the tournament. The $100-added event drew 14 entrants to Side Pocket Billiards in Howell, NJ. That said, he stepped to the tables with work to do and he got the job done.
It went like this. Wrobel opened with a 4-4 victory over George Latko, Jr. (Latko racing to 6) and followed up with a double-hill win (in his one straight-up race to 5) over Rudolph Napolitano that put him (Wrobel) into a winners’ side semifinal against Luis Jimenez. Lampaan, in the meantime, got a bye in the opening round and defeated Pierre Bontempo 7-2 to draw Ronnie Xu in the other winners’ side semifinal.
Lampaan got into the hot seat match with a 5-2 win and was joined by Wrobel, who’d sent Jimenez to the loss side 4-3 (Jimenez racing to 5). Wrobel began the hot seat match with three ‘beads on the wire’ in a race to 7. He didn’t need any of them, as he claimed the hot seat 4-2.
On the loss side, Ronnie Xu arrived, defeated Napolitano 6-2 and advanced to the quarterfinals. Jimenez showed up and drew Bontempo, who’d followed his loss to Lampaan with victories over Michelle Brotons 5-3 and a double-hill battle against his cousin, Aldomar Bontempo. He backed that up with a second double-hill match, defeating Jimenez and joined Xu in the quarterfinals. Xu put a rapid stop to Bontempo’s loss-side streak by shutting him out in the quarterfinals, before Lampaan ended his streak with a 5-2, semifinal win.
Armed, once again, with his 16.3% chance of defeating Lampaan, Wrobel went back to work. Had it been a straight-up race to 7, Lampaan would have won it, double hill. But with Wrobel racing to 4, the 5-4 final score gave him his first regional tour cash payout and tour victory.
Tour director Dave Fitzpatrick thanked David Chennells and his Side Pocket Billiards staff for their hospitality, along with sponsors Billiard Engineering, Off the Rail Apparel,
World Beaters Apparel, JFlowers Cues & Cases, Kamui, Outsville, In the Box, John Bender Cues, and Brutal Game Gear. The next stop on the Garden State Pool Tour, scheduled for the weekend of July 20-21, will be hosted by Diamond Jim’s Billiards & Pub in Nanuet, NY and feature separate events for Fargo Rates of 511 to 660 and 510 and below.
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