Gregorio Sanchez and Ernesto Gomez
In the kingdom of ‘no data,’ speculation rules. There is speculation that the field of regional tours, independent events organized by promoters and the growing field of pool rooms holding their own tournaments, is not just saturated, but super-saturated. Too many events, not enough competitors to make them all as successful as the organizers would like. It’s like a billiards Wild West out there; people grabbing areas, time slots and somewhat counterintuitively, not inclined to coordinate scheduling to maximize their separate interests. To be fair, herding cats has nothing on trying to get tour directors, promoters and room owners together to discuss ways and means of coordinating their efforts within specific geographical areas.
The search for and discovery of speculation about this subject came about as the result of a stop on the Jersey Girl Billiards’ calendar which did not draw its normal field of a gazillion competitors (not even speculation, just outright, comic exaggeration). Chrissy Perlowski, Chief Chaos Consultant of the Jersey Girl Billiards (JGB) operation, is generally reluctant to talk about why she thinks a given JGB event did or didn’t draw a particular number of entrants, preferring to just show up, do her job and leave the speculation about entrant numbers to others.
The ‘numbers’ speculation, which identified events in close proximity at the same time, did very little to dampen the Jersey Girl’s enthusiasm for an event-packed weekend. The organization showed up in Clemmons, NC for its Stop #6 at the new Breaktime Billiards this past weekend (April 26-27). There was a $2,000-added, Split Bracket main event that drew 79 (56 High Side and 23 Low Side), preceded by a Warm-Up tournament that drew 40 and spilled into the early hours of Sunday morning. There was also a 16-entrant One Pocket tournament that finished at 3 a.m. on Sunday morning. A Natural Born Women’s tournament drew a modest eight entrants, who started and finished on Sunday, while a 16-entrant Second Chance event did the same thing; beginning and ending in a matter of Sunday hours. So, six separate events, although technically, the Split Bracket was one event with two brackets. . . so, call it five. Bearing in mind that a number of competitors played in multiple events, the five different events drew a total of 159; with an assumption that many of the 79 in the main event played in some of the other four events.
Makhani, Perry/Templeton and Moreau win Warm Up, Natural Born Women and 2nd Chance
The room owner’s son, Jas Makhani, won the 40-entrant Warm Up event, which got underway Friday evening and concluded at 3 a.m. on Saturday morning. In unforgiving races to 2, Makhani went undefeated to the hot seat, shutting out his first two opponents (including the aforementioned Chief Chaos Consultant, Chrissy Perlowski, who apparently didn’t feel as though she had enough to do) and winning double-hill battles against Joshua Padron and Joey Tate. Joining Makhani for the hot seat match was James Blackburn, who shut out all but one of his five opponents (Bobby Clinton) to meet up with Makhani. Makhani shut Blackburn out to claim the hot seat.
Blackburn moved to the semifinals and ran into Joey Tate, who’d won two on the loss side to reach him. Blackburn/Tate battled to double hill (1-1), eventually advancing Blackburn back to play a two-set, two double-hill final against Makhani. Blackburn won the first, Makhani took the second set and was declared officially ‘warmed up.’
Chrissy Perlowski, Olivia Templeton and Pam Perry
Greensboro, NC’s Olivia Templeton joined our AZBilliards database with an ‘official’ runner-up finish. She came from the loss side and shared the top two prizes with the occupant of the hot seat and ‘official’ winner of the eight-entrant Natural Born Women’s tournament, Pam Perry. Templeton played in 38% (5) of the event’s 13 matches, losing her first, by shutout, against Casey Cork. She won four on the loss side for the right to meet Perry in a final match which didn’t happen. The entire tournament encompassed 13 matches, which played out over four and a half hours.
Perry gave up one rack each to her first two opponents (Kaitlyn Giddens & Dorothy Strater, while Aurora Hestnes gave up four racks, total; three to Katie Bischoff (3-3, Bischoff racing to 6) and one to Casey Cork. Perry and Hestnes battled to double hill before Perry claimed the hot seat. On the loss side, Hestnes walked into a semifinal versus Templeton, who’d won three in a row to eliminate Bischoff, Strater (double hill), and Cork. Templeton made it four in a row by shutting out Hestnes, at which point, she and Perry agreed to a split of the two prizes.
Evan Moreau went undefeated through four matches to grab the hot seat in the 16-entrant, Second Chance tournament on Sunday. He gave up one rack apiece to Eyron DePena and Katie Bischoff before giving up six to Joao Sias. Moreau used four “beads on the wire” in a race to 8 to down Sias 4-6 and advance to the hot seat match. Jesse Cartner, in the meantime, gave up just a single rack over 10 games to join him. Moreau and Cortner battled to double hill (3-2), before Moreau closed it out to claim the seat 4-2.
Cortner moved over and joined the loss side to engage in a rematch semifinal versus Eduardo DeLeon, whom he’d shut out in the second round. DeLeon won three in a row, including a double-hill victory over Kirk Overcash and a forfeit by Sias to meet and shut out Casey Cork in the quarterfinals. DeLeon chalked up a second, double-hill win, avenging his earlier loss to Cortner and as it turned out, played a single set of the true double-elimination final, in which Moreau allowed him a single rack and claimed the Second Chance title.
Rodney Morris
Sanchez dominates (minus one), splits with Gomez, Morris goes undefeated in One Pocket
“Rocket” Rodney first, because the One Pocket event featured 16 competitors in a single-elimination bracket with a tale much quicker to tell. Though the event featured a number of competitors who would figure prominently in the 79-entrant Split Bracket event that you’ll be hearing about shortly (Gregorio Sanchez, Robert Wilkerson, Joey Tate, and Ruben Soto, for example), Rodney Morris went undefeated to claim the One Pocket title, defeating both Sanchez and Wilkerson along the way.
The matches were races to 2 in the first rounds and races to 3 in the semifinals and finals. Morris defeated Joao Sias 2-1, shut out Gregorio Sanchez and advanced to a semifinal against Robert Wilkerson. Jamie Bruce, from the other end of the bracket, shut out both Bill Smith and Bobby Clinton to draw Asad Zaman in the other semifinal.
Two shutouts put “Rocket” Rodney and Jamie Bruce into the final; Morris over Wilkerson and Bruce over Zaman. In a somewhat predictable final, Morris and Bruce battled to double hill before Morris put the ball he needed to drop in the fifth rack, into his designated One Pocket to claim the event title.
Gregorio Sanchez was sort of the ‘gold standard’ of the $2,000-added, Split Bracket main event. He came from the loss side of the High side bracket and played a total of 12 matches, 10 of them racing to 11 and two, racing to 12. He was giving out ‘beads on the wire’ like an old hippie at a rock concert. He gave up just one, twice, to Joey Tate, winning both, 11-7/11-4. He gave up two and three, once each. He gave up four, five, six and seven twice (the 6’s were given to opponents when he was racing to 12). In seven of his 10 racing-to-11 matches, Sanchez’ opponents averaged three racks against him.
His victories over Joey Tate were two of the other three, not factored into that average. The other one wasn’t averaged into the equation because one of his 10 opponents in 12 matches ‘had his number,’ so to speak. Robert Wilkerson, who was picking up ‘beads on the wire’ until he got to the High bracket winners’ side semifinal, got one against Niko Konkel, who was racing to 8 in his opening round and downed him 7-3, He then sent Sanchez to the High side bracket loss side in the third winners’ side round, chalking up seven, before Sanchez (racing to 11) reached eight. They would meet a second time in the semifinal of the High side bracket, with advancement to the Final Four on the line. Wilkerson moved on from his victory over Sanchez to defeat Clint Nichols 8-3. In the hot seat match that followed, Wilkerson gave James McCauley two ‘beads on the wire’ in a race to 8. McCauley claimed the seat 6-5 to set up the Sanchez/Wilkerson rematch. Sanchez eventually won his 11 racks, but not before Wilkerson got six of the seven he needed, forcing a single, nail-biting, deciding game that sent Sanchez to the Final Four.
The ‘twice as many +’ entrants (56) Low side bracket featured Ernesto Gomez (racing to 4 throughout) and Ruben Soto (racing to 5 in all but one match) battling it out for the hot seat. Gomez was picking up a single ‘bead on the wire’ in all but one of his five matches that eventually put him in the seat. He opened with a straight-up race to 4 win over Ricky Dickson 4-2 and used his single ‘bead’ to win the next three matches, including a double-hill win over Bryan Toman (4-4) and didn’t need the ‘bead’ to claim the hot seat over Soto, two matches later 4-0.
Soto moved to the loss side and in the Low side semifinal faced Michael Barbour, who’d lost his opening match to Bryan Toman and headed out on a nine-match, loss-side winning streak that more than earned him the right to be among the Final Four. His streak had survived three, double-hill challenges, two of them right out of the loss-side gate in the first two rounds, against Eric Summers and Keith Young. He got a bit of break in his third loss-side round, shutting out Austin Jones, ahead of being challenged, double hill, a third time, by Kimberly Giglia. Barbour would advance to meet and defeat the eventual Second Chance winner, Evan Moreau, in the Low side quarterfinal and advanced to the Final Four with a 5-3 victory over Ruben Soto in the semifinal.
The Final Four was set. The High side and Low side hot seat occupants; James McCauley, Jr. and Ernesto Gomez (respectively) squared off in what was, in effect, the Main event hot seat match. Meanwhile the High side and Low side semifinalists (Sanchez and Barbour) went at it in a quarterfinal to determine who would face the loser of the Final Four hot seat match.
Gomez got two ‘beads on the wire’ in the race-to-6 hot seat match and didn’t need a single one of them as he shut McCauley out 4-0 to become the last undefeated competitor in the event. Sanchez, in the meantime, eliminated Barbour 11-3 and moved right on to pick up McCauley in the overall event semifinal.
McCauley could have used twice as many ‘beads’ as he got, because the three racks he earned weren’t enough to keep Sanchez out of the final. Sanchez earned his shot against Gomez, advancing 12-3. He’d need two shots to claim the title.
They played only once with Sanchez giving Gomez seven ‘beads on the wire’ in a race to 11. Gomez, like McCauley in the semifinal, needed more ‘beads’ than he got, but two more would have done the trick. Sanchez claimed the Breaktime Battle’s Split Bracket main event title with an 11-2 win, at which point, just ahead of midnight on Sunday and at the tail end of a long, pool-playing weekend for the both of them, they opted out of a second match. Though they would split the top two cash prizes and, in effect, share the title, Sanchez agreed to let Gomez retain the event trophy.
Chrissy Perlowski thanked Sundeep Makhani and his Breaktime Billiards staff for the ‘added-money’ and their hospitality, along with all of the players who competed. She also acknowledged the assistance of Mike DeMarco with Ship the Cash, InTheBox Sports, and digitalpool.com (along with its “#1 Nerd, Zach Goldsmith for making the event run smoothly, all the time, every time.”).
The next event on the Jersey Girl Billiards calendar, scheduled for Memorial Day Weekend (May 23-25) will be the Stars & Stripes 2025 event, hosted by J.O.B. Billiards in Madison, TN. Perlowski noted on the Jersey Girl Billiards Facebook page that “typically, we fill the field (of 128 entrants in each of two brackets – High Side and Low Side) one week prior.”
