Dennis Orcollo (Photo courtesy of Ricky Bryant)
There is one main event and one side event still to be completed after eight days of GREAT pool. The main event is 9 Ball which started on Wednesday with a field of 285 players and is down to the final 12 players. There are three players with a re-buy, John Brumback, Francisco Bustamante and Shawn Putnam. The other nine players with one loss are Bader AlAwadhi, Ronato Alcano, Mike Dechaine, Ralph Eckert, Justin Hall, Alex Pagulayan, Santo Sambajon and Shane VanBoening. The ninth round of the 9 Ball will start at 9 AM on Saturday.
Straight Pool is the side event that is also finishing on the final day of play. Straight Pool was one of two side event played on the Diamond 10 foot tables. The competition started with a High Run Qualifier to determine the field of eight. The field of eight had Stuart Pettman versus Jayson Shaw, Dennis Orcollo versus Ralph Eckert, Alex Pagulayan versus Max Eberle and Niels Feijen versus Darren Appleton. Going into the semi-final round of four were, Stuart Pettman versus Dennis Orcollo and Max Eberle versus Niels Feijen. The last match of Friday going into early Saturday morning would see Dennis eliminating Stuart Pettman in great Straight Pool battle. This puts Dennis in the finals on Saturday awaiting the other semi-final between Eberle and Feijen which will also be played on Saturday.
Friday saw the crowning of the Champion of the first “Big Foot” 10 Ball Challenge. The two semi-final rounds on Friday saw Johnny Archer and Ronnie Alcano going home with $5000 and Niels Feijen playing Dennis Orcollo for the $20,000 dollar first prize. The match saw Niels take an early lead but then passed by Dennis. But Niels continued to grind but came up short as Dennis finished it off at 11 to 9. It was a great battle with Dennis taking home the Championship and Niels gets the $10,000 second place.
