Greg Hogue and Danny Olson
Conflict between expectations and event reality stirs controversy
Greg Hogue of Tulsa, OK, has had two good (recorded) earning years at the tables. They stand as bookends to a 15-year pool career that began in 2006, which remains on record with us here at AZBilliards as his best earnings year. It continues with what is now his second-best earnings year, this one, thanks in large measure to his undefeated performance at the 2022 Sandcastle Open last weekend (June 4-5). The $2,500-added event drew 32 entrants to Sandcastle Billiards in Edison, NJ.
Hogue had to face South Dakota’s Danny Olson twice in this event. Olson, as it happens, is in the midst of his best recorded earnings year since he first showed up in our player database back in 2011. At the end of the Sandcastle Open, while Hogue had moved up to a career-high spot on our AZB Money Leaderboard (#100), Olson moved up to his career-high spot on the board to #72.
They met first in the winners’ side second round. As Hogue was working on an opening round, 7-4 victory over Alex Vangelov, Olson had his hands full with a double hill fight against one of the top players in the world, Jayson Shaw. Olson won that battle, only to be sent west by Hogue 7-4. Hogue advanced to win his third straight 7-4 victory, over Levie Lampaan and pick up Jonathan Pinegar (aka Hennessee from Tennessee) in one of the winners’ side semifinals. Meanwhile, Oscar Dominguez from the West Coast had been busy downing his young protege Adrian Prasad, Alex Osipov and Josh Thiele to arrive at his winners’ side semifinal battle against Raymond Linares.
Dominguez added another 7-4 win to the batch of them, downing Linares to earn his spot in the hot seat match. Hogue joined him after sending Pinegar to the loss side 7-5. Hogue sent Dominguez to the semifinals, claiming the hot seat 7-5.
On the loss side, Pinegar picked up Danny Olson, four matches into the seven-match, loss-side streak that would end in the finals against Hogue. He’d recently eliminated Mhet Vergara 7-2 and Shane Wolford 7-3. Linares drew Derek Daya, who was working on a six-match, loss-side streak that included victories over Lampaan 7-5 and knocked Jayson Shaw out of the tournament 7-4.
Daya chalked up his sixth in a row against Linares 7-5, while Olson was defeating Pinegar 7-3. Olson then stopped Daya’s run 7-3 in the subsequent quarterfinals.
Olson punched his ticket to the finals with a 7-5 win over Dominguez in the semifinals. Though Olson would chalk up one more rack than he’d managed against Hogue in the second round, Hogue claimed the Sandcastle Open title 7-5.
Old story, new day . . .
The 32-entrant field, which resulted in the promotional, expected figure of ‘$5,000-added’ being reduced to the reality of ‘$2,500-added,’ didn’t sit well with the players who showed up. Sandcastle Billiards owner, Ed Liddawi, wasn’t too happy about it either. Prior to the event, 55 players had registered to compete. By the time the event started, that number had dwindled to 32, with only two of the 23 players who did not compete, providing reasonable explanations regarding their inability to attend. The flyer promoting the event made it clear that the ‘$5,000-added’ figure was contingent upon a field of 64 entrants and in the end, Liddawi returned the entry fees to all of the players who had submitted an entrance fee, to include some who reached out to him, in less than reasonable ways, while he was in the middle of conducting the event they had failed to attend.
In comments that surfaced on our own AZBilliards Forums, some players made the point (in a variety of ways) that financial considerations dictate whether or not someone is going to sign on to compete (entry fees, green fees, calculated travel and living expenses, weighed against the potential for winning enough cash to offset those expenses and hopefully, more). Thus, plans to compete are often contingent on there being sufficient money at stake to make attendance worthwhile. A subsequent and substantial reduction in the amount of prize money available has a way of altering the cost/benefit analysis to the point where not only might a player have to face the reality of not making any money, he/she might end up losing money.
That said, room owners, tour directors and event promoters, like Ed Liddawi, are conducting the same sort of cost/benefit analysis built on the financial burdens they have to assume when considering the creation and promotion of a given event. When, through no fault of their own, some of the math is thrown off track, then they, too, have to face the reality that instead of an event, that as planned, was designed to benefit their own financial expectations, as well as the expectations of the players, they have to make hard decisions that inevitably impact both sides of the financial equations. Just like the players, they can end up losing money, too.
Not an ideal set of situations for anybody.
The debate, articulated in the Forums and in some cases, personally to us here at AZBilliards is not new and in a polarizing way, familiar to anyone who follows politics these days. It’s not enough apparently to just state a given case, it becomes necessary to demonize one’s opponents; to call a room owner/event promoter ‘greedy,’ or complain, in general, about how much ‘these people’ work toward making a player’s life miserable by ‘stealing’ from them with no regard as to what they, the players have to deal with, or, conversely, that players ‘don’t understand or care’ about what it takes to organize and ultimately run an event and are ‘only interested in themselves.’
Those are NOT quotes from any particular individuals, merely examples of the sort of close-minded debate that contributes little or nothing to the solution of a central problem that has plagued pool longer than AZBilliards has been around. Part of the problem is, of course, that there have been in the past and continue to be room owners/event promoters who are greedy, cheat players out of money and act in bad faith, caring little about the fate of the players they’re hosting at a given event. But there are also players who act out of bad faith, too, assume they’re being cheated and start with that as a premise when they engage in any sort of discussion about a specific controversy.
The specifics of this decades-old controversy, to include actual quotes from players and room owners can be found in our Forums, stretching back over the years, with a great deal of regularity. Complaining falls under the umbrella of individual and “inalienable rights,” afforded to greedy room owners/event promoters and self-centered, whining pool players alike. But you can’t paint all room owners/event promoters and players with the same brush. It should be noted, as well, that many room owners are players themselves at varied levels of proficiency (Jayson Shaw and Oscar Dominguez, who attended this event, as two examples, and Ed Liddawi, who put it on). Responsible, reasonable room owners/event promoters and responsible, reasonable players do not tend to join the acrimonious debate, especially when it devolves into senseless name-calling and baseless accusations. It is not anyone’s intent to censor the commentary or the Forum community, but it should be incumbent on individuals in both ‘camps’ to seek reasonable solution(s) to the varied and apparently intractable problems represented in the debates themselves.
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