Hunter Sullivan and Jorge Decia
Hunter Sullivan is on-track to make 2024 his best (recorded) earnings year since he picked up his first cash payout at a Predator Tri-State Tour stop, four years ago, at an event hosted by Shooter’s Family Billiards in Wayne, NJ. His latest win on that tour, at this past weekend’s (Sept. 7) $500-added stop that drew 34 entrants to the same location, brought him within a single win, or a well-paying finish among an event’s top five, of exceeding his previous ‘best’ in 2022.
In many cases, players achieve their best recorded earnings year without having won a single event; instead, finishing ‘in the money’ multiple times. Even finishing in the last possible money-earning place will do it if you do that enough times. In five years, Sullivan has recorded 26 cash finishes on three Tri-State NY area tours; 15 of them on the Predator Tri-State Tour, 10 on the Garden State Pool Tour and a single finish on the Mac Attack Tour. He’s won seven of them; four on the Predator Tri-State, two on the Garden State and the single on the Mac Attack Tour. With the exception of his first payout in his first year (2020), he’s won at least one event, every year. This is the first year that he’s chalked up three.
Going into this past weekend’s event, eventual runner-up Jorge Decia had already assured himself of recording his best earnings year, because it was his first. He’d cashed in four previous events on the Predator Tri-State Tour this year, to include his first regional tour win in June (also at Shooter’s Family Billiards). He and Hunter Sullivan almost met in the finals of that June event, having both reached the two semifinals of the event’s single-elimination stage. Sullivan was eliminated by Pascal Dufresne, who was then defeated by Decia in the final.
This time, Sullivan and Decia got the opportunity they’d been denied in the June event. Both were looking for their second, 2024 Predator Tri-State Tour win.
As in June, the event employed a modified, double-elimination format, which sent the last six competitors from a double-elimination bracket to a single-elimination bracket. Hunter and Decia both advanced to single elimination from the winners’ side of the double-elimination bracket. They received an opening-round bye in the single-elimination stage and as they’d been in June, were once again semifinalists at an event hosted by Shooter’s Family Billiards.
Sullivan was awarded an opening round bye in the double-elimination bracket and advanced to single elimination with victories over Landeta Starling and his nemesis from June, Pascal Dufresne, before defeating both Clint Pires and in the final qualifying round, Christian Taeza. Decia, in the meantime, got by Nicole Adams, Brooke Villa, Bob Toomey, Glenn Andaya and Roseann Daw to punch his ticket to single elimination.
Clint Pires and Christian Taeza wended their way through the loss side of the original bracket to what (in a normal, double-elimination bracket) would have been a 5th/6th place battle for advancement to the quarterfinals. Instead, it allowed them to advance to one of the two, single-elimination’s actual quarterfinal matches. Roseann Daw and Bob Toomey did the same thing.
Daw shut out Toomey and advanced to meet Decia in one of the semifinals. Pires and Taeza battled to double hill before Pires advanced to take on Sullivan.
Decia downed Daw 7-3, as Sullivan was busy eliminating Clint Pires by the same score. The missed match from June was on. Predictably, it turned into a double-hill fight that did eventually allow Sullivan to chalk up his second, 2024 Predator Tri-State Tour win and edge him (approximately) one cash payout closer to making this his best year.
Predator Tri-State Tour representatives thanked the ownership and staff at Shooter’s Family Billiards for their hospitality, along with title sponsor Predator Cues, Romer’s Trophies, Phil Cappelle and Sterling Gaming. The next stop on the tour, scheduled for this weekend (Sept. 14), will be a $500-added event, hosted by Diamond Jim’s Billiards in Nanuet, NY.
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