The Action Pool Tour's Lambros Cues Round Robin Tournament is an annual invitation-only event for the tour's top 10 players to compete for a $2,000 Lambros Cue. In conjunction with this annual event, tour director Ozzy Reynolds conducts an Open 9-Ball Tournament and an awards ceremony, highlighting the season's best performances.
This year's event, held on the weekend of September 28-29 at First Break Cafe in Sterling, VA, recognized Brett Stottlemyer as the tour's 2012-2013 #1-ranked player, earning him free entry to October's US Open 9-Ball Championship. Reynolds took first place in the Round Robin tournament, while Brandon Shuff took home the top prize in the Open 9-Ball tournament that drew 32 entrants.
Reynolds changed things up a bit in the Round Robin Tournament this year. Previously, the 10 invited players would compete in a series of matches, culminating in a winner, based on the best overall performance (Brian Deska won this last year). This, however, led to circumstances in which players who were statistically out of the running for the top, Lambros Cue prize, would stop playing. This year, Reynolds created a four-player, single elimination set of matches (semifinals and finals), based on the Round Robin's top four players at the end of the matches.
"It worked really well," said Reynolds, "and added some intensity to the event."
The round robin matches, nine of them, used three different games. In short races to three, the first two games played were 9-ball, the second two were 10-ball games, while a double hill game (if necessary) was an 8-ball contest. The absence of Larry Kressel (#7), and Mike Davis (#5) allowed Brandon Shuff (#11) to move up and join the invited 10. It also advanced Shaun Wilkie (#12), but in his absence, Paul Oh (#13) became the 10th competitor.
Stottlemyer, and Dan Madden (#4) started strong with back to back shutouts, but over the course of the next seven matches, they were overtaken by Shuff, Reynolds (#4), Dominic Noe (#2) and Dave Hunt (#6). Noe chalked up an 8-1 record, which included two shutouts and four, double hill wins. Shuff finished with a 7-2 record, which included four shutouts. His two defeats, both double hill, came in matches against Reynolds and Noe. Reynolds finished 8-1, having given up his only match to Noe in a shutout. The last of the semifinalists was Hunt, who started out slowly, losing three of his first four, but edged Stottlemyer for the last semifinal spot by a single game (Stottlemyer had given up 17 racks, Hunt gave up 16).
The pairings for the semifinal matches pitted Reynolds against Hunt, while Shuff faced Noe. Reynolds defeated Hunt 3-1, while Noe battled Shuff to double hill before prevailing to enter the finals against Reynolds. Reynolds completed his 10-1 day with a 3-1 victory over Noe that earned him the Lambros Cue, valued at $2,000.
In the Open 9-Ball event, Brandon Shuff came back from a defeat in the hot seat match to double dip Danny Green in the event finals. Green, who'd only been able to attend two of the tour's 13 stops and thus, entered the 9-Ball Tournament ranked #41 on the tour, went through the tour's top ranked players to get into the hot seat. Following a bye, he took out Danny Mastermaker (#8), Dave Hunt, Dan Madden, and in a winners' side semifinal, Brian Deska, to get into the hot seat match against Shuff. Shuff, on the other hand, faced only one, top-ranked player - Ozzy Reynolds - whom he defeated 5-2 for a spot in the other winners' side semifinal versus Brian Dietzenbach. Shuff downed Dietzenbach 7-1 to face Green in the battle for the hot seat.
Green took that hot seat match 7-5, and waited on Shuff's return. Deska, in the meantime, had moved west to meet up with Dominic Noe, who'd defeated Reynolds 5-2, and Chris Bruner 7-2 to meet him. Dietzenbach picked up Danny Mastermaker, who'd shut out Pat Carosi, and downed Dan Madden 7-3.
It was Mastermaker and Deska in the quarterfinals; Mastermaker, having defeated Dietzenbach 7-5, as Deska was busy overcoming Noe by the same score. Deska took command of that quarterfinal match to win it 7-2, and though he put up a fight in the semifinals, Shuff prevailed 7-5 for a second shot at Green.
Shuff took the opening set of the double elimination final 7-4, and completed his 6-1 day with a 7-3 victory in the second set.
The Action Pool Tour also awarded another Lambros Cue, this one valued at $1,200, to Dan Madden who came out on top of a season-long competition in participation points. Madden had acquired a winning participation-point total of 167 points, based on attendance at 12 of the tour's 13 events in the 2012-2013 season. In addition, Debbie Davis was recognized as the tour's top female performer, having finished at #23 in the overall rankings, from participation in nine of the 13 tour stops.
