For over ten years, the Billiard Congress of America has used the BCA ranking system to rank players and to use a fair and transparent system for determining which American players get invited to WPA sanctioned international events such as: the World Pool Championship, the World 10-Ball Championship and the 2022 The World Games.
For players to get points in the BCA ranking system they must play in BCA ranking events. These events include: The Turning Stone Classic, Derby City Classic, US Open, US International Open, the Predator Pro Series events, and the American 14.1. Each event is then weighed and adjusted based on field size, purse total and how many top 20 players competed in the event.
The BCA ranking system does allow for a player to miss or drop one tournament within the calendar year without that player being penalized as this system is a rolling points list based on the last eight professional ranking events.
With the recent lack of participation by some of the bigger American names in professional pool, they have understandably started dropping in the BCA rankings.
After the most recent BCA ranking event, the Predator US Pro Billiard Series in Wisconsin, the BCA updated their rankings accordingly and while there is the usual shift in players moving up and down the list, the biggest story is not in who went up the list, but more about who fell down it.
Shane Van Boening, still the top ranked American player, but formerly ranked 10th on the list, has now fallen completely out of the top 15. Before the Wisconsin tournament, Van Boening was the sole American in the top 15 but now with the updated and current rankings, this is the first time in over a decade that not only has Van Boening not been in the top 15, but no American player was ranked in the top 15.
Joining Van Boening in falling out of the top 15 were Naoyuki Oi and Jayson Shaw. With these three players falling out of the top fifteen, the list now welcomes Alex Kazakis, Bader Al Awadi and Roberto Gomez to the top 15.
Remaining in the top spot is Fedor Gorst. Mika Immonen is in a distant 2nd with a 124 point difference between him and Gorst. Immonen had been ranked 3rd on the list, but climbed one spot into 2nd after the Wisconsin tournament and Denis Grabe is also climbing up from 5th to 3rd.
As far as American players on the list, Van Boening currently sits in 18th place, less than 30 points ahead of Tyler Styer and Hunter Lombardo, who are now the 2nd and 3rd top ranked Americans, according to the BCA Rankings.
The next tournament to be BCA Ranking Event in 2022 will be the Predator Pro Series’ Alfa Las Vegas Open that takes place on March 22nd – 26th. Hopefully, we will start to see more participation from our top Americans players at this event and hopefully they can regain their status on the BCA Points List.
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