The Derby City Straight Pool Challenge starts a week from today. This is its eighth year in one form or another. It was founded and run by Bob Jewett the first four years, but he has moved on and is spreading the straight pool gospel in bigger venues now. The sponsors for this years event are Greg Sullivan or Diamond Billiards; Stu Mattana; and Rich Klein. Thanks to them, we are going to be able to watch some more straight pool played by some of the world's best straight pool players.
While not a straight pool tournament, per se, it gives great players an opportunity to play and great fans an opportunity to watch. The players are allowed to pay $100 and take 12 chances for a high run. They rack 14 balls and take the 15th ball in hand and cue ball in hand and see how many balls they can run.
The eight players with the highest runs of the event then have a single eilimination tournament and all of the matches are recorded. The matches will start on Thursday and end on Saturday. Last year the players who qualified were John Schmidt, Johnny Archer, Mika Immonen, Ralf Souquet, Darren Appleton, Niels Feijen, Dennis Orcullo and Alex Pagulayan,
This year there are going to be some changes. The biggest change is that the players will be competing on 10 foot Diamonds. They are moving us out of the Straight Pool Room and into the open balcony areas upstairs overlooking the main floors. There will be two tables on one side and J.R. Calvert and Inside Pool will be live streaming those tables and there will be two tables on the other side and Big Truck will be at least recording those tables. For at least the early part of the tournament, we will have access to 4 tables. We are starting one day earlier this year and the qualifying rounds now start on Saturday.
The reason we are starting earlier is because by Tuesday we will have competition for those four tables as Jay Helfert will be running his 10 ball tournament there also, which starts up on Tuesday. So we will have exclusive use of the tables, as needed for Saturday, Sunday and Monday, but we are not sure how much access we will have on Tuesday. Because of that, we are first encouraging everyone to get their qualifiers done early because they may not get the chance late. Secondly, we are using an extra day for qualifiers and considering Tuesday/Wednesday as one day for purposes of the daily prizes since we figure we may only get 50% of the usage of the tables. There will be daily high run prizes of $300, $200, and $100 for first, second, and third place. These will be awarded for 1) Saturday; 2) Sunday; 3)Monday; and 4) Tuesday/Wednesday. In addition there will be a $1,000.00 prize for the high run of the event.
I know that some of you don't like the fact that ten footers are being used, but we are using the golden rules and the guy with the most gold made the rule. I really don't want this to turn into a thread of whether or not you agree with the decision to use ten footers. That thread was already done. This thread is merely to inform you of what we are doing so you can watch if you like. We are optimistic that we can get some good straight pool for people to watch and we are going to do our best to work within the parameters we were given. We like watching good players play good straight pool and we like the opportunity to give some of them a fair payday.
While not a straight pool tournament, per se, it gives great players an opportunity to play and great fans an opportunity to watch. The players are allowed to pay $100 and take 12 chances for a high run. They rack 14 balls and take the 15th ball in hand and cue ball in hand and see how many balls they can run.
The eight players with the highest runs of the event then have a single eilimination tournament and all of the matches are recorded. The matches will start on Thursday and end on Saturday. Last year the players who qualified were John Schmidt, Johnny Archer, Mika Immonen, Ralf Souquet, Darren Appleton, Niels Feijen, Dennis Orcullo and Alex Pagulayan,
This year there are going to be some changes. The biggest change is that the players will be competing on 10 foot Diamonds. They are moving us out of the Straight Pool Room and into the open balcony areas upstairs overlooking the main floors. There will be two tables on one side and J.R. Calvert and Inside Pool will be live streaming those tables and there will be two tables on the other side and Big Truck will be at least recording those tables. For at least the early part of the tournament, we will have access to 4 tables. We are starting one day earlier this year and the qualifying rounds now start on Saturday.
The reason we are starting earlier is because by Tuesday we will have competition for those four tables as Jay Helfert will be running his 10 ball tournament there also, which starts up on Tuesday. So we will have exclusive use of the tables, as needed for Saturday, Sunday and Monday, but we are not sure how much access we will have on Tuesday. Because of that, we are first encouraging everyone to get their qualifiers done early because they may not get the chance late. Secondly, we are using an extra day for qualifiers and considering Tuesday/Wednesday as one day for purposes of the daily prizes since we figure we may only get 50% of the usage of the tables. There will be daily high run prizes of $300, $200, and $100 for first, second, and third place. These will be awarded for 1) Saturday; 2) Sunday; 3)Monday; and 4) Tuesday/Wednesday. In addition there will be a $1,000.00 prize for the high run of the event.
I know that some of you don't like the fact that ten footers are being used, but we are using the golden rules and the guy with the most gold made the rule. I really don't want this to turn into a thread of whether or not you agree with the decision to use ten footers. That thread was already done. This thread is merely to inform you of what we are doing so you can watch if you like. We are optimistic that we can get some good straight pool for people to watch and we are going to do our best to work within the parameters we were given. We like watching good players play good straight pool and we like the opportunity to give some of them a fair payday.
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