Chuck Evans and Bret Huth
Traditionally, in order to win a pool tournament, a player either takes the hot-seat or beats the person in the hot-seat. There are those rare occasions though, where that is not the case. The opening event on Desert Classic Tour's 2014 schedule at Bullshooters in Phoenix on February 22nd and 23rd was one of those rare occasions as Chuck Evans won the event from the one loss side and never faced Mitch Ellerman in the hot-seat.
Saturday play saw the field of forty four players battle it out to see which eight players would qualify for Sunday play. While Saturday usually has it's fair share of upsets, Saturday play at this event saw mostly top players beating other top players. The day featured very few surprises.
Possibly the biggest upset of the day came at the end of the biggest story of the day, that being the outstanding play of Sara Miller. Sara won her first three matches on Saturday - with wins over Sam Yonki, Tenadore Lee and Ray Robles - before dropping a match to Chuck Evans. On the one loss side, Sara found Mike Williams waiting. Mike had just eliminated Sara's fiancé Tres Kane, but that didn't phase Miller as she quickly ended Williams' tournament with a 7-2 beat down.
Other players winning matches late on Saturday to qualify for Sunday player were Ken Gouso who defeated Junior Jiron, Andy Kachur who eliminated Eric Young, and Brian Reich who got by Max Maurer.
Sunday began with four players left on each side of the board. The winners side saw Bret Huth with a dominating 8-2 win over Chuck Evans, and Mitch Ellerman with an equally dominating 10-3 win over Jim Henrickson.
Meanwhile, the one loss side saw Miller picking up where she left off on Saturday and eliminating Ken Gouso 7-4, while Brian Reich was sending Andy Kachur to the rail 8-3.
Miller kept on rolling in the next round, and defeated Henrickson 7-3, with Reich succumbing to Evans in a tough hill-hill match.
The match for the hot-seat saw Ellerman take a hill-hill decision over Huth, and then have to forfeit out of the tournament in order to catch his flight for the US Barbox Championship.
Sara Miller's magic weekend finally came to an end as she appeared to run out of gas against Chuck Evans. Evans took control of a 1-1 match and won seven straight games for the 8-1 victory.
The semi-final match, which also served as the final match with Ellerman halfway to Reno, saw Chuck Evans taking control early and racing to the hill at 7-3. Huth had problems getting any started until Evans was already on the hill. At 3-7 down, Huth made one last charge and he brought the match to within one game at 6-7 down, before Evans regained control and won the match 8-6.
