David Nunn and Thomas Haas
Laura O’Neal goes undefeated to win Natural Born Women tournament
The chaos management of pool tournaments with 200 or more entrants has got the government, multi-national corporations, big Broadway musicals and your average family of 12 beat, hands down. While the comparisons listed tend to have management personnel at different levels tackling diverse sets of tasks, 200-entrant+ pool tournaments have got logistical problems, emotional highs and lows, unpredictable players, disputes, delays, equipment failures and a ticking clock that keeps everybody on edge in one way or another. It’s organized chaos; live, relentless and dependent on sharp management and quick thinking.
Jersey Girl Billiards’ Chrissy Perlowski and a staff of three (along with the technical expertise of digitalpool.com) are continuously putting themselves in the path of that kind of chaos every time they set up somewhere to run a pool tournament. This weekend, for example (March 28-30), they ran five tournaments, hosted by the JOB Billiard Club in Madison, TN; a Warm Up event that drew 36 entrants on Friday night, a $200-added (by Perlowski) High Side and Low Side bracket (in effect, two separate tournaments), with 64 and 126 entrants, respectively. They also ran a modest 12-entrant tournament in the Natural Born Women series of events, and a 24-entrant, Second Chance Tournament on Sunday, as well. Most of the players who signed on to the Warm Up and Second Chance were part of the 202 unique players. As chaotic as trying to prepare a report on the three events may be on our end, it’s nothing compared to what she and her staff had to do in a couple of days. They’re not the only ‘200+ entrant’ tournaments in the pool world, but they’re certainly one of only a handful of US tours and independent events that deal with that many pool players on any given weekend. If Chaos Consultant was a job title, Ms. Perlowski’s image would probably appear on a recruitment poster.
We’ll take them in order, commencing with Friday night’s Warm Up. The format was races to 2, which translates into ‘make NO mistakes,’ and means that there are only two possible match scores; you either shut your opponent out or battle him/her to double hill and finish from there. Thomas Haas, as he would do in the main event, went undefeated to the hot seat in the Warm Up, downing Michael Laney to claim it. Lainey would return from the semifinals and the two would split the event’s top two prizes.
Haas’ undefeated run through the 64-player High Side bracket began with four matches in which he compiled an aggregate game score of 37-6. He gave up (not in order) no racks at all to Ryan Hogans, one to Josh Burton, two to Jeff Cook, and three to Steve Legace to arrive at a winners’ side semifinal against Robert Wilkerson. Jacob Martin, in his trip to the same place, chalked up an aggregate score of 24-10, with half of his racks-against showing up in a double-hill win over Ricky Taylor. Martin drew Eric Cunningham in the other winners’ side semifinal.
Haas got into the High Side hot seat match with a 9-3 win over Wilkerson and was joined by Martin, who’d sent Cunningham west 6-2. Haas claimed the hot seat 9-3.
Cunningham and Wilkerson got right back to work on the loss side. Cunningham eliminated Jamie Barlow (7-4), while Wilkerson and Laney locked up in a double-hill battle for advancement to the quarterfinals. Wilkerson did the advancing 7-8 (Laney racing to 9). Wilkerson defeated Cunningham in those quarterfinals and then gave up just a single rack to Jacob Martin in the semifinals, punching his ticket to the event’s Final Four.
Nunn goes undefeated on Low Side bracket, Milford joins him in Final Four from the Low Side
David Nunn had a reasonably uneventful trip to the hot seat of the Low Side bracket, giving up only seven racks to five opponents for an overall aggregate game score of 26-7. In his winners’ side quarterfinal, he faced a female opponent, Amada Huff, who’d proved her skill at getting there by opening her winners’ side trip with a shutout and then, surviving three straight, double-hill battles that assured her a tournament payout regardless of what happened in her match versus Nunn. She would end up winning $500 as the main event’s top-finishing female. Nunn did end her winners’ side streak with a 6-1 victory, just ahead of defeating Edwin Harris 5-3 in a winners’ side semifinal.
Nunn’s opponent in the hot seat match, Charles Milford, ran into a pair of double-hill challenges on his way to the meetup, the first of which, against Chad Turner, opened his campaign. Milford survived a subsequent, almost-double hill match before settling into a pair of matches in which he gave up just a single rack in each. A second, double hill battle, against Shadrick Adams, was followed with another single rack-against in a winners’ side semifinal match versus Johnny O’Bryan.
Nunn gave up just a single rack to Milford to claim the Low Side’s hot seat. Milford moved over to the loss side and in the semifinals, defeated O’Bryan 3-1, joining the Final Four.
Thomas Haas and David Nunn played in what was, in effect, the Final Four hot seat match, while Wilkerson and Milford played a Final Four loss-side match. Haas, racing to 9, gave up just a single rack to Nunn, and became the ‘last (undefeated) man standing.’ Milford and Wilkerson, in the meantime, locked up in a double-hill battle. Milford went into the match with five ‘beads on the wire’ in a race to 8; a substantial ‘leg up,’ by any standard. He took full advantage and it did come down to one single game with Milford winning it 3-7. And then there were three . . .
The Low Side bracket’s hot seat match (Nunn vs. Milford) was now a Final Four, semifinal rematch. The second verse, as it turned out, was the same as the first. Nunn downed Milford 6-1 a second time and turned back for a second, possibly third match against Haas in the true double-elimination final. Haas had given up just a single rack in their first match (battling for the Final Four hot seat), but this time, Nunn put up a fight. Again, with four ‘beads on the wire’ in a race to 9, Nunn chalked up four of the five racks he needed to claim the title. Haas shut him down in the last main-event match of the 2025’s Let’s Rock Nashville tournament with a double-hill 9-4 win.
Laura O’Neal – Natural Born Women winner
A combination of ladies and gents closes out the Let’s Rock Nashville weekend
The 12-entrant, Natural Born Women’s event got underway around 2 p.m. on Sunday afternoon and was over by just after 11 p.m. Laura O’Neal went undefeated through five opponents to claim the title. She was playing ‘above her paygrade’ in every one of them and only once did she need any of the ‘beads on the wire’ she was awarded to win. With a single ‘bead on the wire’ in her opening match, she defeated Briana Laine 3-2, just ahead of the only match in which she used all four of the ‘beads’ she needed. In a race to 7 against Allison Hardwick, O’Neal chalked up the three racks she needed just before Hardwick won the 7th rack she needed.
It was full-speed ahead from there, as O’Neal defeated Jersey Girl Billiards’ Chrissy Perlowski 3-2 (Perlowski racing to 6) in one of the winners’ side semifinals and advanced to the hot seat match. Her opponent was Michelle Dunn, who, after a bye, opened with a double-hill win over Brenda Anderson and shut out Crystal Graham in the other winners’ side semifinal.
O’Neal took the first of her two against Dunn 3-1 (Dunn racing to 5) and claimed the hot seat. Dunn moved over and in the semifinal, faced Hardwick, who’d followed her loss to O’Neal with three straight wins that included a double-hill win over Grace Garretson that set her up versus Hardwick. Dunn shut Hardwick out and got a second, possibly third shot versus O’Neal. O’Neal put a stop to that idea with a 3-2 win that gave her the Jersey Girl Billiards’ Natural Born Women title.
And finally, in the 24-entrant Second Chance tournament that according to the digitalpool time stamps didn’t finish until just after 2 a.m. on Monday morning, about a half hour after Haas defeated Nunn in the main event, Ryan Laughridge went undefeated to the hot seat. Along the way, he’d dodged two straight double-hill ‘bullets,’ downing Dwight Connie in a winners’ side quarterfinal and Robb Saez in the winners’ side semifinal. Laughridge ended up splitting the Second Chance’s top two prizes with Rodney Elrod, who’d won seven on the loss side for the right to meet up with him in a final match (or two) that didn’t happen.
Jersey Girl Billiards’ Chrissy Perlowski, who (you’ll likely have noticed if you made it this far), added to the tournament chaos that she organized and ran by competing in the ladies event, thanked the ownership and staff at the JOB Billiard Club, along with her three cohorts, Jeannie Hutto (Tournament Director and referee), Ed Broadaway (assistant TD and referee) and digitalpool.com’s Zach Goldsmith for the event’s live streaming service. All of the video content available from the 2025 Let’s Rock Nashville event can be viewed at https://www.digitalpool.net/job along with clips from other events. She also thanked Goldsmith a second time for his able technical assistance with the digitalpool.com software and Yu Gu, with Cue Lees, who operated a booth at the facility and donated a cue to a raffle. She expressed gratitude as well for all of the pool players who came out to participate in another Jersey Girl Billiards event.
The next stop on the Jersey Girl Billiards calendar, scheduled for the weekend of April 25-27 will be hosted by the new Breaktime Billiards in Clemmons, NC, which by the time Jersey Girl Billiards shows up, will have put a few weeks of ‘opening days’ behind them.
Ms. Perlowski, in the meantime, continues to organize more opportunities for the organized chaos of her 200+-entrant pool tournaments, though not before, as she traditionally does, she closed herself off from the world and the non-stop demands of her cell phone for a day (Monday).
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