Johnny Archer (File photo courtesy of Ricky Bryant)
Some months ago, Pat Fleming of Accu-Stats Video Productions was driving along and thinking of how he could finance an idea he had for a “Six Man 8 Ball Round Robin event” to be put on in their Sandcastle Billiards Simonis Arena facility.
Thinking aloud he said “what if I approached my customer base, and asked them to pay in advance for a package of DVD’s, products and services, and let the customers pick who they want to play in the event”. Well that is exactly what he did, and the response was so overwhelming that not only did he get the 100 subscribers that he was looking for, but many of his customers offered to purchase two packages if he fell short of his goal of 100 packages sold.
Amazingly the top six players that the customers chose, all accepted an invitation to play in this event. So the customers really did “Make it Happen”
Their six man team comprised of: Efren Reyes - Johnny Archer - Shane Van Boening - Alex Pagulayan - Darren Appleton and Corey Dueel.
With the success of this 8 Ball event, plans are afoot for an Accu-Stats One-Pocket invitational, and subject to the success of the One-Pocket event more disciplines will be catered for.
SHANE VAN BOENING VS COREY DEUEL
At 1:00 pm on Thursday afternoon, we saw the first match in this unique new format being played out for real, as we saw Corey Deuel vs. Shane Van Boening in an alternate break 8 Ball match - Race to 8 - using a set of red and yellow balls - with a 90 second shot clock for the first shot after the break, and a 30 second shot clock for all shots after that. Plus the 9 ft Diamond table that is usually used for tournament play in the Simonis Arena, has been replaced by a 10 ft Diamond table with 4” pockets specifically for this event
Shane soon had this match to 6-2 in his favor - in the next game Corey looked to get the run out, but missed an easy shot to let Shane get it to 7-2.
In what would be the last rack of the match, Corey broke and made a ball, but missed the next shot - which was almost straight in. Shane played a lock safe, and Corey was so absorbed in the process of getting out of the great safe that he forgot about the clock, and got a time violation, allowing Shane to run out the rest of the rack. Shane won over Corey Deuel 8-2.
EFREN REYES VS JOHNNY ARCHER
It was really a pleasure to be able to watch Efren perform his magic at the table in his 3 pm match, and we soon saw him ahead 3-1. Johnny however, did not give up and soon had the score back to 3-3. From here the score stayed pretty level up to 5-5, before Efren got it to 7-5 in his favor. Johnny who is known as a tremendous grinder managed the win at 8-7 despite too many dry breaks from both players, plus a couple of time violations to Efren and some uncharacteristic errors from Johnny Archer 8 - Efren 7
ALEX PAGULAYAN VS DARREN APPLETON
This 7 pm match definitely revolved around the break, or the lack of it. As Darren only managed to make a ball once on his five attempts, and unfortunately that ball was the cue ball. On the other hand, Alex made a ball or balls on all of his five breaks. This breaking problem was evident in the score line that had Alex ahead at 4-1 before Darren added another bead on the wire at 4-2. But that was all she wrote for the newly crowned World 9-Ball Champion, as he never made another game. Pagulayan 8 - Appleton 2
JOHNNY ARCHER VS SHANE VAN BOENING
The fans clearly had Shane the favorite in this match, but I guess nobody told Mr. Archer about this, As Johnny came out swinging and soon had the score in his favor 5-1. Shane’s problem was the break as he dry broke five out of his seven attempts. In Shanes defense he did play well when he had the opportunities, and managed to get the score to 7-5, but could not stop Johnny in this match. Archer 8 - Van Boening 5
As the day came to a close on this brand new unique event it would appear that both the promoter and the players were very happy with how it all played out
FOR “PAY PER VIEW” INFORMATION GO TO ACCU-STATS.com
