Final Four Prepare For War at U.S. Open

We are now down to the final four players at the U.S. Open. The two undefeated players are Karl Boyes and Y.H. Cheng. Boyes' victims included J.H. Dang 11-5 and Haitao Liu 11-8. He then faced a huge barrier in Jayson Shaw but climbed over hm 11-9. Cheng took out Ruslan Chinakov 11-6, K.L. Hsu 11-8 and American favorite Justin Bergman in a double-hill thriller 11-10.  Now he and Boyes will fight for the hot seat.

Our two contestants on the one-loss side are Ralf Souquet and Haitao Liu. Liu eliminated Bergman 11-8, Dennis Orcollo 11-6, And K.L. Hsu 11-7. Souquet earned his berth with victories over Corey Deuel 11-9, Ruslan Chinakov 11-10 and Jayson Shaw 11-10.


Play on this our final day will begin at 1 PM and all of the rest of the matches will be streamed live on Accu-Stats.com. It has been a tough week for the crew at Accu-Stats as the internet at the host hotel has truly proven to be the weak link in the chain of this event. But the internet feed is now using two outlets that back one another up so the matches today should go well. They will certainly be bang-up matches today and you may still subscribe to the stream at Accu-Stats.com.

The BCA Hall of Fame banquet was held last night and we all welcomed Oliver Ortmann and Charlie Ursitti into the hallowed hall. As an extra bonus the first Tony Robles Sportsman Award found its initial honoree in the very deserving Oscar Dominguez. Plus, Barry Behrman was presented with an award celebrating his 40 continuous years of staging the Open. It was an energized and often emotional evening and Mike Panozzo of Billiards Digest deserves a lot of credit for organizing  the event that went off without a single hitch. He arranged for videos that were shown highlighting the careers of Ortmann and Ursitti and we had two great speakers to introduce our new Hall of Famers. Lorree Jon Hasson introduced her 'second father' Ursitti with tears in her eyes for the man who has meant so much to her both personally and professionally and Jerry Brieseth introduced Oliver Ortmann with an excellent speech that highlighted Ortmann's accomplishments over the years. Ortmann then thanked the two men whom he said enabled him to find his dream. He heartily thanked both Pat Fleming and Brieseth as he said that without them none of this could have happened. Mr. Ursitti recountd his many experiences with the likes of Mosconi and Fats and all of the television work he has produced to promote the game.