Alex Pagulayan has won the Billiard Factory World Summit of Pool at the Riviera Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Pagulayan seemed to get stronger as the tournament went on during the week. He started with an 11-7 win over John Schmidt followed up by an 11-5 win over Tony Chohan, an 11-7 win over Dave Hemmah and a win over Canadian Young Gun John Morra. Francisco Bustamante was the next to fall as Pagulayan scored a lopsided 11-3 win to earn a chance to play for the hot-seat.
Pagulayan would not get the hot-seat though, as the man of the month Shane Van Boening was having an equally impressive tournament with wins over Danny Petralba, Troy Frank, Lee Heuwagen, Ernesto Dominguez and Warren Kiamco without letting one opponent score more than seven games against him. Van Boening rolled over Pagulayan 11-4 to assure himself a spot in the finals of a major event for the third time in the past 30 days.
While Van Boening was resting in the hot-seat, Pagulayan was scoring another win over Francisco Bustamante in the second TV match of the day Saturday (Bustamante defeated Kiamco 7-4 in the first TV match. With the win over Bustamante, Pagulayan earned his place in the finals.
Pagulayan started strong in the final race to seven and took an early 5-2 lead, only to see Van Boening come back to tie the score at 5-5. A scratch on the break at 5-5 by Van Boening turned out to be the turning point as Pagulayan won the next two games for the 7-5 win.
Pagulayan earned $12,000 for first place while Van Boening settled for $5000. Bustamante and Kiamco filled out the top four spots.
File photo courtesy of Diana Hoppe - Pool Pics by Hoppe
