Stop #11 of the Mezz LA 9 Ball Series at Good Times Billiards started out with a tough field of SoCal pool players, with Jose G Centeno (648) defeating Kevin Nakamura (528) hill-hill in a single 8/6 race finals! This is Jose’s FIRST win in the series, and puts him at FIRST PLACE on the final Leaderboard standings, narrowly passing Keegan “K9” Badour (641) by only 25 points.
Jose came out the gate swinging hard and got through round 1 with a 7-0 shutout against RJ Villasenor (595) and followed it up with another 7-2 victory in round 2 against Team San Diego’s Jared Pitts (635). In his next match, Jose found himself down 5-0 in a 7/6 race against Chaokun Li (590), but was able to stay calm & focused and came all the way back to win 7 racks straight and win the match hill-hill! Jose got one more win in round 4 against Season 3 Opener champion Joseph Leon (594) which set him up for the hot seat match against Kevin Nakamura, but he lost some of his focus and the match 5-4. Once on the B side, Jose found himself against another strong player from San Diego Luis Abarca (610), but was able to narrowly hold on and won hill-hill to reach the finals.
Jose’s Fargo coming into the event was 648; his Effective Rating for this stop was 682 – exactly what Jose needed to put himself over the line!
Kevin’s run was very strong as well – going 5 rounds undefeated to reach the final. He started out by beating S1 9 Ball King of LA and Team LA player Chris Wedekind (628) with a decisive 5-3 score. From there, Kevin had some tough and very close matches, defeating Tony Garcia (627), Terrence Lee (585), Keegan Badour, and finally Jose G Centeno to capture the hot seat and await the final.
Kevin’s Fargo coming into the event was 528; his Effective Rating for this stop was 644! Kevin certainly has the potential to go deep in many more tournaments and says he’ll be bringing his A game in Season 4.
Congrats as well to all those below that cashed and put up some big numbers on the Leaderboard!
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