The draw for the 43rd US Open 9-Ball Championship has been made, with Jayson Shaw to begin his defense against Marcus Weston at Mandalay Bay Resort, Las Vegas on Sunday, April 21.

 

The draw was seeded with a golf-style category system adopted, which took in rankings from across the pool world including WPA World Ranking, BCA Standings and Fargo Rating. As defending champion Shaw was seeded No.1, while five-time US Open champion Shane Van Boening is seeded second as the highest ranked American player.

 

Broadcast details for the 2019 US Open 9-Ball Championship will be announced shortly. Live rack-by-rack scoring will be available throughout the event at www.matchroompool.com thanks to Matchroom Multi Sport’s partnership with CueScore.

 

The draw, brackets and match schedule can be viewed now at https://cuescore.com/tournament/US+Open+9-ball+Championship/5185877

 

Note: Should any players featured in the draw not participate in the event, they will be replaced directly by the first player on the event waiting list to accept a spot in the tournament, irrespective of where the new player would have featured in any seeding category.

 

All matches at the US Open 9-Ball Championship takes place April 21-26 at Mandalay Bay Resort, Las Vegas. Matches are race to 11, winner breaks, except the final which is race to 13. The draw and match schedule for the first stage of the tournament is available now at www.matchroompool.com.

 

Tickets for the 43rd US Open 9-Ball Championship are still available at www.matchroompool.com from as little as $10 with VIP packages also available for the final three days of the tournament.

 

The tournament will be split into two stages with the full field playing double elimination down to the final 16 from Sunday April 21st until Tuesday April 23rd across multiple tables. From Wednesday April 24th until Friday April 26th the final 16 players will play straight knockout in the TV Arena in front of a global television audience.

 

US OPEN | ROUND ONE DRAW

 

Jayson Shaw vs. Marcus Westen

Tom Staveley vs.Jason Williams

Hunter Lombardo vs. Kosuke Tojo

Radwan Jameel R Sorouji vs. Tommy Tokoph

Naoyuki Oi vs. Marco Vignola

Alex Montpellier vs. Jason Klatt

Martin Daigle vs. Patrick Flemming

Angelo Salzano vs. Corey Deuel

Petri Makkonen vs. Marcel Price

Peter Busarac vs. Amar Kang

Franklin Hernandez vs. Ellis Brown

Paul Jaurez vs. Justin Bergman

James Aranas vs. Roderick Malone

Masato Yoshioka vs. Erik Hjorleifson

Stephen Folan vs. Jochen Kluge

Jon Demet vs. Toru Kurabayashi

Fedor Gorst vs. Gary Onomura

Stanley Walton vs. Paul Duell

Omar Al-Shaheen vs. David Dimmitt

Amer Al-Darbani vs. Mateusz Sniegoki

Dali Lin vs. Fabio Rizzi

Jason Hitzfeld vs. Jeremy Jones

Philipp Stojanovic vs. Steve Van Ness

Dalibor Nikolin vs. Francisco Sanchez Ruiz

(Kevin) Cheng Yu Hsuan vs. Christopher Lawson

Mohammed Ali N Al Eid vs. Ivo Aarts

Rodney Morris vs. Ken Kuwana

Deomark Alpajora vs. Radoslaw Babica

Marc Bijsterbosch vs. Ritchie Ogawa

Gary Urinoski vs. Danny Olson

Toan Nguyen vs. Bahram Lofty

Giuseppe Iacobucci vs. Ko Pin-Yi

Carlo Biado vs. Fahad Salem N Alharbi

Kenichi Uchigaki vs. Tyler Fleshman

Matt Edwards vs. Marco Penta

Hideaki Arita vs. Maksim Dudanets

Jeff De Luna vs. Torsten Schmitt

Chris Robinson vs. Rob Hart

Marco Teutscher vs. Raymund Faraon

Yip Kin Ling Leo vs. Dennis Orcollo

David Alcaide vs. Jorg Kellner

Blake Baker vs. Mitch Ellerman

Siming Chen vs. Mohamed Baabad

Jamal Oussi vs. Hoang Duong Quoc

Liu Haitao vs. Patrick Griess

Mike Stalk vs. John Schmidt

Justin Espinosa vs. Nguyen Phuc Long

Koh Yong Lee Randolph vs. Eklent Kaci

Ko Ping-Chung vs. Sami Koylu

Cole Gibbons vs. Brian Sanders

Brandon Shuff vs. Michael Yednak

Robert Hewings vs. Michael Dechaine

Konrad Juszczyszyn vs. John Chapman

Luis Guerrero vs. Hayato Hijikata

Kenny Loftis vs. Corey Harper

Michael Hutcheson vs. Thorsten Hohmann

Johnny Archer vs. Kurt Kobayashi

Konrad Piekarski vs. Roberto Gomez

Jani Siekkinen vs. Damian Pongpanik

Bora Anar vs. Alex Pagulayan

Sangin Pehlivanovic vs. Bryan Farah

Ching-Shun Yang vs. Milos Verkic

Kings Santy vs. Michael Delawder

Jason McClain vs. Alexander Kazakis

Joshua Filler vs. Matt Krah

Thomas Welle vs. David Anderson

Jalal Yousef vs. Henrik Larsson

Tom Griffith vs. Roman Hybler

Jeffery Ignacio vs. Lefteris Georgiou

James Davee vs. Kostas Koukiadakis

Hsu Kai-Lun vs. Adam King

Ralph Eckert vs. Mika Immonen

Wu Kun Lin vs. Kuo Szu-Ting

Kang Lee vs. Ernesto Dominguez

Darren Appleton vs. Terry Spalding

Patrick Holtz vs. Richard Halliday

Tyler Styer vs. Kelii Chuberko

Che-Wei Fu vs. Josh Roberts

John Barton vs. Zachary Bos

Johann Dominik Hiber vs. Wu Jiaqing

Dennis Grabe vs. Lee Heuwagen

Jeffrey Jimenez vs. Ronald Regli

Liu Ri Teng vs. Gwyn Spooner

Arnar Peterson vs. Chang Yu-Lung

Wang Can vs. Dejan Sipkovski

Jonathan Mcdowell Pakieto vs. Francisco Bustamante

Max Eberle vs. Robert Goddard

Florida Pro Tour vs. Aloysius Yapp

Skyler Woodward vs. Luu Minh Phuc

Stephen Holem vs. Imran Majid

Jason Theron vs. Katsuyuki Yamamoto

Stan Tourangeau vs. Ruslan Chinakov

Wojciech Szewczyk vs. Renato Camantigue

James Adams vs. Marek Kudlik

Brendan Ng vs. Paddy McLoughlin

Brian Parks vs. Niels Feijen

Chang Jung-Lin vs. Roland Stock

John Moody Sr vs. Adam Lilley

Nick Malaj vs. Dimitri Jungo

Francesco Candela vs. Tomasz Kaplan

Mario He vs. Michael Pruitt

Cheng-Chieh Liu vs. Tommy Kennedy

Vilmos Foldes vs. Marc Vidal Claramunt

Max K Reyes vs. Billy Thorpe

Dang Jin Hu vs. Ben Crawley

Jamie White vs. Tony Chohan

Gabe Owen vs. Gary Lutman

Elliot Sanderson vs. Robbie Capito

Warren Kiamco vs. Mark Showalter

Brendon Bektashi vs. Hsu Jui-An

Patrick Mannillo vs. Melinda Huang

Ryo Yokawa vs. Chris Melling

Ralf Souquet vs. Molrudee Kasemchaiyanan

Seiji Kuwajima vs. Simon Pickering

Earl Strickland vs. Pedro Botta

Steve Lingelbach vs. Dennis Hatch

Donny Mills vs. Eugene Villena

Mark Foster vs. Shaun Wilkie

Kim Laaksonen vs. Chris Alexander

Steven Lingafelter vs. Albin Ouschan

John Morra vs. Marco Spitzky

Adam Mscisz vs. Marlon Manalo

Alejandro Carvajal vs. Dustin Dixon

Philipps Yee vs. Johann Chua

Mieszko Fortunksi vs. Chris McDaniel

Robby Foldvari vs. Yukio Akagariyama

Manny Perez vs. Nicolas Charette

Abdullah Saeed O Alshammari vs. Shane van Boening

They call it The Freeze; an annual event, hosted by Malarkey's Pool & Brew in Tacoma, WA. Given that temperatures throughout this year's March 5-6 event ranged in the upper 50s to low 60s, the title's a bit of a misnomer, and given the level of competition generally on display, you'd think it would boast a title with a touch more heat to it. Last year, Shane Van Boening defeated Rafael Martinez in the finals. This year, Marc Vidal and Simon Pickering worked their way around a host of other marquee names (Warren Kiamco, Jeffrey Ignacio and John Morra, for example) to be the last two standing. Vidal went undefeated in the $1,500-added event that drew 72 entrants to Malarkey's.

 

Vidal and Pickering met first in the hot seat match. Vidal had sent Kiamco to the loss side 7-4, as Pickering was doing likewise, 7-5, to Ignacio in the winners' side semifinals. Vidal moved into the hot seat 7-5 over Pickering and waited for him to get back.

 

On the loss side, Kiamco had the misfortune of running into a surging John Morra, who'd defeated Paul Poitier 7-4 and Eddie Carrido 7-2 to reach him. Ignacio picked up Damian Pongpanik, who'd just eliminated  Sean Lewis and Dan Louie, both 7-3. Ignacio and Morra moved on to the quarterfiinals, both 7-5, over Pongpanik and Kiamco.

 

Morra defeated Ignacio 7-4, and then, by the same score, was himself eliminated in the semifinals by Pickering. Vidal required only a single set of the potential double elimination final, defeating Pickering 7-3, to complete his undefeated run and claim the 2016 Freeze title.

The 2014 Malarkey’s Thanksgiving 9-Ball Classic Tournament attracted 77 pool players from Washington, Oregon, California and Canada. The weather wasn’t cooperating on Nov. 29-30, dumping 4-6 inches of snow that Saturday morning, but none of the pool players let that stop them from getting to Tacoma to for some of the best competition in the Pacific Northwest. Entry fee was $75 and the field filled up fast. Malarkey’s added $1,500, to make the total prize money $5,350. With 77 players, the race was to 7 on the A side and was shortened 6 on the B side. Once we got to the money rounds, the B side race went to back up to 7. Played on nine 9 ft Gold Crown tables, it took 16 hours on day 1 to get down to the final 16 players for day 2. Rail2Rail Productions furnished the live stream coverage and a new company from Canada, ScoreSaloon provided live match scoring on their website. 

 

The competition was intense and two players, one from WA and one from Canada, immediately stood out from the crowd, demolishing their opponents as they charged through the brackets: Dan Louie and Simon Pickering.  Dan Louie won the point against Leroy Dorsey and waited for the rest of the B side battle it out. On Day 2, Simon was sent to the B side by Rafael Martinez, but that didn’t stop Simon’s charge to the finals. He defeated some really top notch players, including Bob Zack, Stan Tourangeau and LeRoy Dorsey for a shot at Dan Louie in the Final Match.  Simon won the first set against Dan Louie 7-3, but Dan was not going to be doubled dipped. Dan came back for the second set, stronger than ever and beat Simon 7-5 in that last set, winning the $1,400 first prize money! Simon took home $800 for his efforts. LeRoy Dorsey finished 3rd place.  1st High Woman was Jenny Lewis and 2nd was Joyce Robinson. Congratulations to the players finishing in the money. 

 

Thanks to all the players that participated, Clark Smith, owner of Malarkey’s for sponsoring this event and adding $1,500 to the prize money, Rebecca Easley, the tournament director, for managing 77 players in one weekend,  ScoreSaloon for introducing live match scoring and Rail2Rail for their complete live stream coverage so no one had to miss any of the Malarkey’s Annual Thanksgiving 9-Ball Classic.