The St Albans Hurricane Room
Unit 8 Verulam Industrial Estate
224 London Road
St Albans
Hertfordshire
AL1 1JF
www.hurricaneroom.co.uk
www.t9b.co.uk - Live scoring
Saturday 12 January 2013
Dave Nelson being handed a truckload of cash by Tournament Director Nicole Hansen.
Nelson and Wildman Share the spoils
Total9ball kicked off it's busy 2013 calendar of events at St Albans yesterday. The original plan was a Mosconi style format but it was soon clear that a January event was going to be hard to fill. It was decided that the original format will be used later in the year and T9B would revert to the popular 2x format. This unique format works even with a small field of players offering fantastic value and a player can still leave the club with some large prize money.
12 players entered the event, even with such a small field it was still a great day of pool for the players and with the top prize for the jackpot win of £330 it was still well worth giving maximum effort at becoming the first undefeated player.
Matches were race to 8 racks, with handicaps being added to this. There were some top players on show with Dave Nelson making the trip from Yorkshire, T9B founder Phil Wildman and ever consistent Ramesh Gokhul among the favourites. It was also great to have Alex Kontaroudis back in a Total9ball event, Alex used to be a regular player at T9B with some success but work commitments meant he had to move back to his home country of Greece.
Share this article on FaceBook
"Read More..." for the details.
Dave Nelson began his Total9ball experience with a fantastic 8v0 win against very capable Richard Main, this progressed him through to a match with ever improving Tom Staveley.
Tom was also his opponent in the other half of the draw, Dave showed he was in St Albans to win the event with an 8v5 victory in match one, could Dave end Tom's day by knocking him out of both sides?
No was the answer as Tom battled back from 6v4 down to take the match 8v7 with a good clearance at hill-hill.
Ramesh Gokhul had a mixed start to the event beating St Albans local league player Mikko Tuomi 8v6 but was then beaten 8v2 by Larry Catapang from Reading.
Phil Wildman drew Darren 'DJ' Saxby in both sides of the draw and it ended a draw with both players winning one match each both results were 8v6.
New Total9Ball player Rattapol Sassmann had a very good first event getting the furthest reaching the Quarter Finals in both sides of the draw. Wins against Mikko 8v5 and two match wins over Larry Catapang both by an 8v4 scoreline lined Rattapol with Quarter Final matches against Ramesh Gokhul and Richard Main.
Lionel Brown showed he was back playing some top pool with winning results against Alex Kontaroudis 8v3 and Darren Saxby 8v4.
At this stage the draw with results looked like this...
The Match between Wildman and Staveley was recorded by Dave Knight from www.pro9.co.uk and is worth a watch it was definitely a game of two half’s.
Watch Part 1 of the Quarterfinal match between Phil Wildman and Tom Staveley.
(Admin Edit: It looks like YouTube are offering to stabilise the image in these videos now, so withing 24 hours I expect the annoying swaying from side to side visible on these videos to be a thing of the past. Check back later to see the difference, because it seems to work in the preview they showed me - whoopee!)
Watch Part 2 of the Quarterfinal match between Phil Wildman and Tom Staveley.
Dave Nelson and Phil Wildman were due to play in the Final but it was decided that the prize money would be split between the two players.
Thanks to St Albans Hurricane Room for hosting yesterday's event, to Nicole Hansen for running another successful event, to Dave Knight for attending, taking some photos, to our sponsors Kamui, Oliver Ortmann's "Ultimate Breakmaster" and www.pro9.co.uk. Thanks also to the players who attended - I hope you all enjoyed the event.
It was another good event at St Albans today, Total9ball are looking at running a similar event at High Wycombe Hurricane Room which is a lovely new venue for T9B events - any amateur players are welcome and if you would like to enter please post your name in the forums.
All results and stats will be available at www.t9b.co.uk later this evening.
February sees the start of the T9B National Series, Event 1 is to be held in Solihull with over 50 players on the entry list also the T9B Amateur Series begins at St Albans on 9th Feb which currently has 46 entries both events will be excellent and I'm sure that all entrants will enjoy themselves.
