Albanian youngster Eklent Kaci added another win to his American resume with an undefeated run through the field of 36 players at the Joss NE 9-Ball Tour stop at Union Station Billiards in Portland, Maine on April 29th - 30th.
Fresh off his win at the World Pool Series' Aramith Masters in early April, the 18 year old sensation swept through the winner's side on Saturday with four straight dominating wins. Kaci beat Dave Fernandez, Mike Bourque, Bruce Nagle and Jim Hayden by a combined score of 36-13. Matching Kaci on the right side of the board was American Guy Bouthot. Bouthot took advantage of a first round bye, but then scored wins over Sarah Preston, Paul Cormier and Mark Stewart.
Kaci started his Sunday with a 9-6 win over Nelson Oliveira (the closest he had allowed an opponent to get to beating him all weekend), while Bouthot scored a 9-2 win over Samoth Sam. From there, Kaci scored a 9-2 win over Bouthot to take the hot-seat.
After defeating Oliveira 9-6, Bouthot was right back looking for another shot at Kaci in the finals. In the first set of the finals, Bouthot was able to double his number of games won against Kaci the first time they played. Unfortunately, the was still just four games. Kaci took that first set 9-4 for the undefeated win.
In the second chance tournament, Jim Hayden bounced back from a 3-0 loss to Steve Lillis for the hot-seat, to eliminate Jamie Garrett 3-2 and then double dip Lillis 3-1 and 3-1 in the finals.
The lucky winner of the $1500 custom engraved Joss Cue was Darrell Heroux.
The next stop on the Joss NE 9-Ball Tour will be another $1500/$500 added event, at Snookers in Providence, RI on June 3rd - 4th. That stop will be the last regular season stop before the Turning Stone Classic XXVIII on August 31st - September 3rd.
