Uncle Jack’s Hosts 3rd Annual Seattle 9 Ball Championships

The weather outside was a perfect sunny mid eighty degrees, so we decided to go indoors for the weekend, and have a little pool tournament with just about every top player in the B.C., Washington, and Oregon area. In fact the field was so crowded that nearly a dozen players trying to sign up at the last minute had to be turned away. While the Players Club LTD (tournament directors) and the room owners hated to do this, we had a good reason in that we wanted the race to stay as high as possible. So the field was limited to 64 players, and just to warn you, this will be the case at the 4th one next year, so sign up early if you can in August 2010.

One reason for the crowd was the guaranteed $1000.00 that was added by the room owners, Randy and Junko. They also helped us by having a wonderful staff on hand that worked their butts off to keep everyone happy. How often do you go to a big pool tournament and not hear one single complaint! Randy is definitely considering more events in the near future, and has both BCA and APA leagues already, so visit his web site for details.

The race was to nine on the A side, and seven on the B side, so even with 11 Gold Crown Brunswicks to use, we played until almost 1:00 AM on the first day. In our experience, that usually means it's just us tournament directors and the last couple of players left, however, there was a big group still there watching, with an even bigger group that had moved to the bar area to party and play each other on all the seven footers. But to our surprise, the place was still standing when we showed up to open at 9:00 AM the next morning.

Sunday brought the money rounds with just 16 players left. A few of the big names that didn't make it were champions like Randy Camatigue, Harry Platis, Robert Colby, and Jim Conway. While there were a ton of great matches, like Rich's hill hill matches against Marvin Holmes and Eddie Mataya , and James Davee's victory over Stan Tourangeau , in the interest of brevity, we'll stick with the final three. It starts with Damian Pongpanik's run to the point, with only Glenn Atwell in the A side finals getting even to seven games against him. Then Rich Geiler, who lost to Glenn in the semis, got past James Davies 7-5 by playing like the Rich we all know so well, only to have Glenn shoot lights out to get him 7-3. This left a final race to 11 for all the marbles. It started as a see-saw battle that had it tied 6-6, but Glenn got his best game going and took the next five in short order to win 11-6 at around 8:30 PM.

We at Players Club LTD would love to thank Uncle Jack's and all the players and spectators who made it such a fun event for us to run, and we'll see you at the Washington 8-ball Bar Table Championships on Sept 19th!