Mike Banks Jr.
There are regional tours and independent events operating out of a variety of metropolitan areas in the US whose promoters would sell their collective grandmothers to draw 100 entrants to a weekend tournament. Some get them, of course, but not (they’ll tell you) as much as they’d like. While there are certainly any number of USA and world-based weekly tournaments that we here at AZBilliards don’t hear about or receive information from, we do field a lot of requests for coverage on a weekly basis and we do our best to keep our ‘fielding percentage’ high enough for us to be relevant.
That said, last weekend’s (Sept. 15-17) $5,000-added Inaugural Stevie Chan Memorial drew 96 entrants to within four SE miles of Denver in Aurora, CO and here we are. Some regional tours and independent events in Texas come close to getting that ‘magic number’ of 100 on a more or less regular basis, but Texas is twice the size of Colorado (2.5 actually). The Dallas/Fort Worth metropolitan area’s population is twice the size of Denver’s metropolitan-area population, of which Aurora is a part. The event drew its 96 entrants to Piazza’s Italian Restaurant and Sports Bar in Aurora.
Rumor has it that snacking on cannolis while waiting for matches to be called might have been as powerful a draw as the largest total payout for a regional tour/independent event in Colorado history; $65.8k. That amount included $14.6k for the tournament itself, and a whopping $65.8k in ‘side pots.’
One more item before we turn our attention to a report on the tournament itself. According to Patrick Roy, owner (with Tony Piazza) of Piazza’s Italian Restaurant and Sports Bar, Stevie Chan, for whom the tournament was named, was a Colorado pool legend. His passing in the summer of ’22 no doubt played a role in the large number of entrants who came out to pay their respects and in tribute, competed in an attempt to get paid for their efforts.
“He was part of the Colorado pool community for more than two decades,” said Roy of Stevie Chan, “and a friend and mentor to many of the players in it.”
“We will be organizing this event every year, going forward,” he added.
It was Mike Banks, Jr. who claimed the inaugural Stevie Chan Memorial title and did so while splitting his time evenly between the winners’ side of the bracket and the loss side. He began his (recorded) payout history with us just last year and recorded his first payout of this year by winning this event. Mexico’s Ruben Bautista, whose recorded payout history with us began a ‘baker’s dozen’ years ago, went undefeated to the hot seat, defeating Banks for the first time in a winners’ side semifinal. He would then lose both sets of the event’s true double-elimination final to Banks, both sets going double hill.
Banks faced a challenging first match against Shane McMinn. After sending him to the loss side 7-5, Banks downed Marc Hosler (4) and Larry Romero (7-5) and then defeated Mark Vidal 7-1. Bautista sent him to the loss side 7-4 in the winners’ side semifinal. Donivan Pedroncelli, in the meantime, won three of his first five matches double hill, including a double-hill win over Mark Haddad in the other winners’ side semifinal, which sent him into the hot seat match against Bautista. Bautista claimed the hot seat 7-4, little suspecting that he’d won his last match.
Banks, meanwhile, had moved over to the loss side where he first ran into Sharik Sayed, who’d lost a winners’ side quarterfinal to Pedroncelli and then eliminated Jose Cruz 7-4 and McMinn, double hill. One Mark ran into another on the loss side when Haddad arrived to take on Vidal.
Banks ended Sayed’s day 7-3 and advanced to the quarterfinals. One Mark beat the other one (Haddad over Vidal), advancing to join Banks.
Banks won the quarterfinal 7-4 over Haddad and then, eliminated Pedroncelli 7-5 for a rematch, double-elimination shot against Bautista, waiting for him in the hot seat. In reduced-to-7 races, Banks downed Bautista twice, double hill, to claim the Inaugural Stevie Chan Memorial title.
Piazza’s Italian Restaurant and Sports Bar owners, Tony Piazza and Patrick Roy thanked their room managers, Scott “Scooter” Norton and Peter Mercaldi, for their help in putting this first Stevie Chan Memorial together, along with Tournament Director Shade Gedo. They also thanked sponsors Kyle Hill and Elijah Jarosh with Hill Restoration, Smoky Hill Roofing, C & M Stucco, Smoothie King, Beardown Billiards, Smart Signs and CO Print Press. Matches from the tournament can be viewed on Piazza’s Live on FB and YouTube.
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