Raphael Dabreo came back from a personally imposed layoff that had seen him win his last Tri-State Tour stop in July of 2008, to go undefeated on the tour's Saturday, December 5 stop. The $750-added, B-D handicapped event drew 28 entrants to Master Billiards in Queens , NY.
DaBreo faced what was, for him, a whole new field of names than the ones he'd faced back in July of '08, when he defeated George Osipovich in the finals. This time out, he had to get by Troy Deocharran twice to take the event title. After victories over Mike Harrington and Dave Shlemperis, DaBreo first met Deocharran among the winners' side final four, defeating him 7-5 to get into the hot seat match against Dave Ascolese, who'd just sent Alex Borukhovich west 8-6. DaBreo gained the hot seat with a 7-4 win over Ascolese, and waited for what turned out to be Deocharran's return.
Deocharran's first assignment on the one-loss side was Scott Simonetti, who had worked his way past Shlemperis and Arturo Reyes, both 7-6, to get to him. Justin Muller, who'd defeated Geoffrey Bauer 7-5 and Masatoshi Ebihara 8-7, was waiting for Borukhovich. It was Muller and Deocharran advancing to the quarterfinals; Muller with an 8-5 win over Borukhovich and Deocharran downing Simonetti 8-7. Deocharran then dropped Muller into fourth place and Ascolese into third with identical 8-6 scores that put him into the finals against DaBreo.
With momentum on his side, Deocharran allowed DaBreo only a single rack in the first six games of the final match to take a 5-1 lead. DaBreo came back to win three games in a row, before Deocharran posted what proved to be his final win of the match. Up 6-3, Deocharran watched as DaBreo won three to tie it and then win the 13th rack to win his first Tri-State event in almost 18 months.
