Ramon Rodriguez, Cain Austin and Pasini Taloa
Cain Austin claims the hot seat to chalk up his first (recorded) payout in a regional tour event
By the time Cain Austin found himself sitting in the hot seat of this past weekend’s (Sept. 21-22) Stop #9 on the Cuetec DFW 9-Ball Tour, he was likely bursting with confidence. Up to that point, he had never recorded a cash payout with us here at AZBilliards and sporting the lowest FargoRate in the tournament (455), he’d defeated five opponents; two of them, double hill. Using FargoRate calculations, his odds of defeating any one of them ranged from 8.3% to 27.8%. You could easily imagine him, sitting in the figurative hot seat, thinking “I’ve got this!”
Unfortunately, Austin came up against his lowest odds of winning (6.2%) in the true double-elimination finals when he faced table veteran Ramon Rodriguez, who had one of the tournament’s highest FargoRates (663), behind Gus Briseno (719), Clint Freeman (701) and Roman Bayda (677). Rodriguez has been chalking up wins and making entries into our database for 14 years. Rodriguez wasn’t likely thinking “I’ve got this!” until later in the tournament, because he lost his opening match and had to run a gauntlet of eight loss-side matches before defeating Austin twice in a true double-elimination final. The $1,000-added event drew 31 entrants to Jeffro’s in Canton, TX.
Racing to 5 throughout, Austin’s trip to the hot seat match (with chances of winning in parentheses) went through Joshua Paredes 5-2 (21.3%), before chalking up two straight double-hill wins against Juan Parra (8.3%) and Payton Bernard (27.8%). He drew Mark Johnson in one of the winners’ side semifinals; Johnson was (at last update) #2 behind Gus Briseno in the tour standings.
Working from the opposite end of the bracket and destined for the hot seat match was Pasini Taloa, who’d opened with a double-hill win over Jon Rawlins (7-6, Rawlins racing to 8), downed Keith Diaz 7-4 and survived a double-hill bout with Clint Freeman to pick up Tony Mathew in the other winners’ side semifinal.
Fargo gave Austin an 8.6% chance of advancing to the hot seat match; odds he defied by defeating Johnson 5-2 (Johnson racing to 7). Taloa joined him with a 7-4 win over Mathew. With a 15.6% chance of claiming the hot seat, Austin battled Taloa to double hill (his third) before defying the odds again and claiming his first hot seat.
Ramon Rodriguez’ eight-match, loss-side trip was almost derailed in his first loss-side match when he faced and won a double-hill challenge by Mike Pickering. He followed that with an almost-double-hill match versus Clint Palaci (8-6). Two matches later, he won a second, double-hill bout against Clint Freeman. He then gave up just a single rack to Juan Parra to draw Johnson. Neil Sidawi, who’d lost his winners’ side opener to Payton Bernard 6-5 (Sidawi racing to 7), also won five straight to draw Mathew. Sidawi had faced a double-hill challenge by Keith Diaz in his second, loss-side round and had recently eliminated Eric Terry 7-2 and, in their rematch, Payton Bernard 7-4.
Rodriguez advanced to the quarterfinals 8-5 over Johnson, as Mathew joined him by stopping Sidawi’s loss-side streak cold, allowing him only a single rack. Rodriguez did the same thing to Mathew in those quarterfinals. Taloa put up more of a fight in the semifinals, chalking up five against him, before Rodriguez completed his loss-side run 8-5.
It was an extraordinary, double-elimination final between two competitors who had earned their right to be a part of it; the lower-ranked, least-experienced player working his way to the hot seat and the higher-ranked veteran plowing his way through eight, loss-side matches to challenge him. If ever there were a mechanism for a shared title, this was it.
‘It,’ however, was not meant to be. Forty-five minutes after the conclusion of the semifinals, Austin lost his first match in the opening set of the true double-elimination final. Rodriguez allowed him only two racks in that opening set and one less than that in the second set to claim the event title.
Tour representatives thanked the ownership and staff at Jeffro’s for their hospitality, along with title sponsor Cuetec and Fort Worth Billiards Superstore. Stop #10 on the Cuetec DFW 9-Ball Tour, scheduled for the weekend of Oct. 19-20, will be hosted by the VFW in Sherman, TX.
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