The adage is that the two hardest games to win in a set are the first and last. Bucky Souvanthong found that out the hard way at the Joss NE 9-Ball Tour stop at Salt City Billiards in Syracuse, NY on January 16th - 17th.
Fans in attendance would have been hard pressed to pick Souvanthong to be challenging for first place in the event, after a hill-hill loss to Jamie Garrett in his second match of the day on Saturday, but after nine straight wins he was ready to challenge for the win.
Bucky would have to get by Jeremy Sossei, which no one had managed to do over two days. Sossei cruised to the hot-seat match, where he defeated Ron Casanzio 9-7.
After a 9-8 win over Casanzio in the semi-finals, Souvanthong took complete control of the first set of the finals with an 8-3 lead. Then Sossei turned the tide. Sossei came back from a five rack deficit to win six in a row and take first place by the narrowest of margins at 9-8.
The second chance tournament on Sunday drew fifteen players, and it was Dave Ricci beating Marco Kam two out of three sets for first place. Ricci won the hot-seat match over Kam 3-2, lost the first set of the finals 3-1 and then won the second set 3-0 for first place.
Karen Clark was the lucky winner of the $1700 custom engraved Joss pool cue raffle drawing at this event.
Mike Zuglan is already taking sign-ups for the Turning Stone Classic XXVI on August 25th - 28th. This will be a Mosconi Cup point event and the field will be limited to 128 players.
The Joss NE 9-Ball Tour will be at Sharpshooters Billiards in Amsterdam NY for their next event on February 20th - 21st.
