As of this past weekend (Oct. 22-23), there were five pool players in a tie for the 28th spot in the Cuetec DFW 9-Ball Tour’s standings. It took Monti Albadi and Robert Reighter eight events to amass the 200 points associated with the current five-way tie. It took Robbie Cleland six events to earn them. It took Greg Sandifer three. It took Logan Miller, cashing for the first time on the DFW 9-Ball Tour, or anywhere else for that matter, just one. He went undefeated through a field of 72 entrants at the $1,500-added, second-to-last stop (#10) on the 2022 tour hosted by Snookered in Frisco, TX, to claim his first-ever (recorded) cash winnings and event title on the same weekend.
In the end, hot seat and finals, Miller used a handicap (Fargo Rate) to his advantage. In the course of his seven-match march to the winners’ circle, Miller’s Fargo Rate (536) had him battling people above and below his rating. He got by Bobby Coston (even), Monti Albadi (lower), Tony Matthew (higher) and Joshua Paredes, who would end this event in the tie for 5th/6th (even). This set him up to face Jeff Turney (higher) in one of the winners’ side semifinals. Ramon Rodriguez, in the meantime, was working his way to the hot seat match, sending Tina Soto, Tony Loeper, Highway Segadi and Jonathan Rawlins to the loss side and drawing Mark Johnson in the other winners’ side semifinal.
Rodriguez downed Johnson 7-3, as Miller was busy sending Turney over 5-3. With Rodriguez racing to 9, Miller claimed the hot seat 5-6.
On the loss side, Johnson picked up Paredes, who’d followed his loss to Miller with victories over Sigadi 6-2 and Casey Dawson 6-4. Turney drew David McNamara, who, racing to 10, had lost his opening match to Ricky Phifer 5-8 and embarked on an eight-match, loss-side winning streak that had just eliminated Robbie Smith 8-2 and Cody Pratt 7-2.
McNamara made it eight in a row with an 8-2 win over Turney. Johnson joined him in the quarterfinals after downing Paredes 8-3. Johnson and McNamara battled to double hill (Johnson with two ‘beads on the wire’ in a race to 8) before Johnson put an end to McNamara’s long, loss-side run, 6-7 in those quarterfinals.
Johnson started the semifinals with a single ‘bead on the wire’ in a race to 7 against Rodriguez and fought his way into a second straight double hill match. Johnson prevailed 6-6 for a shot at Miller in the hot seat.
With five appearances behind him on the 2022 tour and already poised to record his highest finish of the year no matter how the final matches turned out, Johnson (611) entered the finals. This time, he’d be the one giving up ‘beads on the wire, two of them, to his lower-rated opponent, Logan Miller (536). Even with the ‘two bead’ advantage, Fargo Rate odds gave Miller only a 35% chance of winning his first ever major tournament. He beat the odds, downing Johnson 6-6 to claim the event title, as Johnson’s runner-up finish elevated him into the tour’s top ten competitors..
Tour representatives thanked Craig and Jana Lucas and their Snookered staff for their hospitality, as well as title sponsor Cuetec and Associate Sponsor Fort Worth Billiards Superstore (Albert Trujillo and team). The Cuetec DFW 9-Ball Tour will conclude its 2022 season in the place where it began, Rusty’s in Arlington, TX, where the season’s finale is scheduled for the weekend of November 19-20.
Trying to figure out how many times Joey Gray has defeated Shane McMinn in the finals of a regional tour event is like looking for two needles in a haystack. To make matters worse, it seems likely that a lot of needles, representing the number of times that it’s happened, have been left out of that haystack, not reported for any number of reasons. We were able to find one event – The 3rd Summer Heat 9-Ball Classic Open Division in Midwest City, OK in 2014 – at which Gray went undefeated, downing McMinn in the hot seat and finals. We found a few instances in which McMinn had bested Gray in the finals, all dating back to 2008. These two, along with another Midwest notable, Chip Compton, have been pounding the pool pavement for over a dozen years now, and they’ve probably traded picking up first-place cash at least that many times, but again, hard to know really. There’s nothing quite like history to make a rivalry, any rivalry, compelling to hear about, and if you’ve been lucky enough, to watch.
On the weekend of March 30-31 at Magoo’s Bar & Grill in Tulsa, OK, Gray and McMinn went at it again at a stop on the Midwest 9-Ball Tour, where, it’s relatively safe to say, this long-standing rivalry has occurred the most and arguably, most times not in the finals of a given event on the tour. This time around, Gray chalked up his second (known) victory over McMinn in the finals. They met three times; once in the hot seat and twice in the finals. Gray took two of the three, double-dipping McMinn in a double elimination final. The $1,550-added event drew 56 entrants.
In a $450-added Ladies event that drew 17 entrants, Alisha Dodd downed Jenny Shaffer twice and undefeated, claimed the Ladies title (more on this later).
Gray and McMinn got into their first match, battling for the hot seat, after two, 7-6 double hill matches in their respective winners’ side semifinals. Gray sent Jackie Melton to the loss side, while McMinn sent Cody Pratt over. McMinn sent Gray to the semifinals in a match that fell a single game short of double hill (7-5) and left McMinn in the hot seat.
On the loss side, Melton drew Ryan Robinson, who’d eliminated John Gabriel and Jonathan Kitchen. Pratt picked up Marshal Roney, who’d defeated Neil Drews and Tony Vue. Pratt and Robinson downed Roney and Melton and advanced to the quarterfinals.
Robinson then defeated Pratt 5-3 in those quarterfinals, before having his loss-side run terminated by Gray 5-3 in the semifinals. Gray took the opener of the double elimination final 7-5, and then shut McMinn out 5-0 in the second set to claim the event title.
In what might be considered a mega-event, within the tournament itself, AMC’s Remodeling in Mullinville, KS sponsored a ‘bounty hunt.’ Spectators at the event selected a competing candidate as the individual most likely to win the actual event. Any player who sent that individual to the loss side earned himself $50. If a player eliminated that player from competition, he’d earn $100. Shane McMinn was the player selected as the likely winner of the event, so when Joey Gray sent him to the loss side by winning the first set of the double elimination final, he earned himself $50. When Grey defeated him the second time, thus eliminating him, he earned the other $100.
Dodd goes undefeated to claim title, runner-up Shaffer collects bounty on Brittany Maynard
Alisha Dodd went undefeated through the 17 entrants in the Ladies event, downing Jenny Shaffer twice in the hot seat and finals. Shaffer, however, was the player who sent the spectator-selected Brittany Maynard to the loss side, earning herself $25, and then, in the semifinals, when she defeated Maynard a second time, she picked up an additional $25.
Dodd and Shaffer met first in the hot seat, once Dodd had sent Jessica Westbrook to the loss side and Shaffer had sent Kat Snelling over. Dodd claimed the hot seat 5-3 over Shaffer and waited on her return.
On the loss side, Westbrook picked up and defeated Laura McDermott. Snelling drew Maynard, who defeated her. Maynard shut Westbrook out 4-0 in the quarterfinals and then fell to Shaffer 4-2 in the semifinals. In a repeat of the hot seat match, Dodd defeated Shaffer in the finals 5-3 to claim the event title, while Shaffer collected her bounty for her two victories over Maynard.
