U.S. OPEN 2026, Frisco, Texas, August 25-30

[Bob Jewett]

Quite frankly, Darren is acting like a little bitch. Bob, I have all the respect in the world for you, but any talk of “banning the old chalk” is completely ludicrous. Gee how did any of us ever get by before “makeup chalk”?

I'm not proposing a ban, but that's exactly what a lot of snooker players are asking for. Skids tend to cost them a lot more than they cost pool players.

 

[Magictrat007]

Darren Appleton and Denis Grabe were praising him on Facebook hoping he runs tournaments in the future. I was surprised by all the positive comments.

I’m not surprised at all. Does he have a shady past and questionable character?? Absolutely yes.. did he throw the biggest pool tournaments in history and give out the biggest payouts ? Yes absolutely. Both can be true.

 

[jbart65]

Is a 700 fargo player beating a higher player really an upset? 700 fargo players can easily run out as any higher ranked player.

Yes, it most certainly is. Players with Fargos in the 800s beat 700 Fargo players the vast majority of the time.

true. but do you think sky puts in the 8 hours/day like a normal working stiff? i would think biado, alcaide, etc do

Honestly, not my business or my concern. Biado and Alcaide play great and a still family men, but everyone's situation is different.

Hard to be a family man and be a top pool player. Being a family man is worth so much more anyway.

Sky has to decide what is best for him and his family, I am sure we all agree.

Yet what is best for him is not best for Mosconi. Not knocking him. I can only judge him by his performance. This year, he has played in very few events and not played well.

an 800 player losing to a 700 on these tables is an upset. but i guess the way sky's been playing all year, and manny being a decent high level player coming back from a hiatus, it's not as much of a shock

I had not seen Manny play before, but he looked very good vs. Woodward. Better than his listed Fargo. That said, Sky made some critical - and imo avoidable - errors that resulted from lack of attention or lack of practice/play.

Sky suggested before the Florida Open he was hoping to basically play his way into shape. Can't get away with that anymore on the WNT.

In any case, how he responds to the loss will be telling to me. Does he buck it up, practice hard and go down swinging? Or lose again without much fight?

 

[skogstokig]

He might just!

Just his answers to the questions and his demeanor... not sure many could have pulled that off. I'm sure he will poke fun somehow when he gets a chance. Such a good sport/sportsman

klenti has a good mix of humor and arrogance. i wonder if he will get back to pre-injury form. he should have better sparring now that kledio plays at such high level

 

[nmh2008]

klenti has a good mix of humor and arrogance. i wonder if he will get back to pre-injury form. he should have better sparring now that kledio plays at such high level

I wonder what Kaci's reputation is like amongst his peers. In person & in interviews he always comes across as a good dude, he's just also an insane online troll lol

 

[jbart65]

I was impressed with the first day of the U.S. Open in Frisco. Fairly large crowd that was quite noisy at times. Seems like a ton of room in the hotel for the tables and lots of space.

Everything really is bigger in Texas, as they say!

Ticket sales for the weekend have topped 1,000. Verging on Hanoi type crowds. Should be a nice atmosphere for the finals on ESPN2.

I signed up for ESPN Plus to add an eyeball. Only $13 for the month. The cheapest ESPN plus plan was hard to find, however, and it wasn't intuitive or easy to find the broadcast feed. ESPN+ is picking up the main WNT commentators on Table 1.

 

[nmh2008]

Yes, it most certainly is. Players with Fargos in the 800s beat 700 Fargo players the vast majority of the time.


Honestly, not my business or my concern. Biado and Alcaide play great and a still family men, but everyone's situation is different.

Sky has to decide what is best for him and his family, I am sure we all agree.

Yet what is best for him is not best for Mosconi. Not knocking him. I can only judge him by his performance. This year, he has played in very few events and not played well.


I had not seen Manny play before, but he looked very good vs. Woodward. Better than his listed Fargo. That said, Sky made some critical - and imo avoidable - errors that resulted from lack of attention or lack of practice/play.

Sky suggested before the Florida Open he was hoping to basically play his way into shape. Can't get away with that anymore on the WNT.

In any case, how he responds to the loss will be telling to me. Does he buck it up, practice hard and go down swinging? Or lose again without much fight?

Sky hasn't played well the last several times I've seen him play, he's certainly not playing anywhere near his Fargo rating at the moment. Manny Perez has a ton of game but feels like you never see him play big events. Seems like he typically is playing Midwest tournaments and has probably run into (and presumably beaten) Woodward many times in the past

 

[GideonF]

Years back Magic Chalk came on the scene, everyone here raved about it, that it was cleaner than standard chalks, Dr. Dave tested chalks for amount of hits without a miscue, it ranked the highest amongst all others tested. Yet no one talks about it anymore, did it become less clean, stop preventing miscues?

I don’t believe anyone said Magic Chalk was cleaner than anything aside from the actual lipstick chalks (the old Kamui). It wasn’t and I’m pretty sure Dr Dave’s tests didn’t say otherwise.

What Dr Dave’s tests DID show was that Magic Chalk allowed you to shoot many more shots without re-chalking before you have a miscue. It didn’t allow for hits outside the traditional miscue limit though and if you chalk often it didn’t add anything.

 

[GideonF]

Is a 700 fargo player beating a higher player really an upset? 700 fargo players can easily run out as any higher ranked player.

Using their actual Fargos, you can see that Fargo predicts a player of Manny’s speed to beat a player of Sky’s speed 1 in 10 times in a race to 9.

 

[skip100]

Sky has 810 potential but not 810 consistent speed of late.

 

[skogstokig]

I had not seen Manny play before, but he looked very good vs. Woodward. Better than his listed Fargo. That said, Sky made some critical - and imo avoidable - errors that resulted from lack of attention or lack of practice/play.

he was a good junior player iirc. younger than sky or thereabout? point is he's been in the spot before, it's not like playing pros is new to him. anyway, sky will have to beat dohr and bj ussery in losers side

 

[jbart65]

As I’ve stated in other posts, I don’t go by Fargo alone to decide which matches are upsets. I add my own subjective (eye test) views.

In the first round of 128 matches, there were only four upsets:

Earl Strickland defeats Eklent Kaci 9-8.
Corey Deuel defeats Elliott Sanderson 9-8.
Manny Perez defeats Skyler Woodward 9-7.
Levi Taylor defeats Eric Roberts 9-8


In the second round, there were more competitive matches. The following top pros went sent to the loser’s side:

Naoyuki Oi (lost to Dominik Jastrzab)
Sanjin Pehlivanovic (lost to Rodney Morris)
Szymon Kural (lost to Michael Feliciano)
Wu Kun Lin (lost to Hsieh Chia Chen)
Justin Bergman (lost to Denis Grabe)
Wiktor Zielinski (lost to Sun Yi Hsuan)
Jeffrey De Luna (lost to Konrad Juszczyszyn)
Marco Teutscher (lost to Vitaly Patsura)
Mieszko Fortunski (lost to Oscar Dominguez)
Chris Melling (lost to Chang Yu Lung)
Walter Laikre (lost to Max Lechner)
Dimitris Loukatos (lost to Nathan Childress)
Lee Van Corteza (lost to Chris Reinhold)
Arseni Sevastyanov (lost to Andri Januarta)
Roland Garcia (lost to Lu Hui Chan)

 

[skogstokig]

ffs, if they're so hot on the ESPN thing don't put JJ on the tv table. one of the slowest players ever

 

[iusedtoberich]

and that happened before V10.
Taom Pyro and 2.0 had issues with some tips and miscues. That why they kept pushing it and developed V10. I know guy who invented Taom.
He said 6 months before V10 was released that it will have 15% better grip than Pyro and stays better on harder tips.
You know if more than 90% of players think something is better and new standard people always take one example who does not(like it for some reason) and keep preaching it.

I've grown to like the Taom, but also feel it miscues more than Masters.

The 90% thing is weird though. Most players today love Diamond rails but they are trash. You yourself know that. That's a good example of the 90% being wrong, imo.

 

[iusedtoberich]

I'm not proposing a ban, but that's exactly what a lot of snooker players are asking for. Skids tend to cost them a lot more than they cost pool players.

They need to start spinning the crap out of every shot like Efren, whether inside or outside spin, and they'll never skid again

 

[jbart65]

Not many compelling matches on paper in the early round coming up soon on Day 2.

Only one that really interests me is Albin Ouschan vs Alex Pagulayan. Haven't seen Alex play in a while.

 

[skogstokig]

The 90% thing is weird though. Most players today love Diamond rails but they are trash. You yourself know that. That's a good example of the 90% being wrong, imo.

taylor swift and U2 are other examples

 

[jbart65]

ffs, if they're so hot on the ESPN thing don't put JJ on the tv table. one of the slowest players ever

Come on, Skog. You know the TV table has a shot clock! JJ can't play that slow!

 

[iusedtoberich]

Not many compelling matches on paper in the early round coming up soon on Day 2.

Only one that really interests me is Albin Ouschan vs Alex Pagulayan. Haven't seen Alex play in a while.

If that's not on a shot clock table, it will be unwatchable.

 

[datnodude]

I wonder what Kaci's reputation is like amongst his peers. In person & in interviews he always comes across as a good dude, he's just also an insane online troll lol

Emily called him a dick once, karl and others have said he's a nice guy