SJM at the 2022 US Open 9-Ball

Tin Man said:
It was fun to catch up and sweat the finals with you Stu!

I agree with your write up.

I would prefer they use a shot clock earlier and allow races to 9 on both sides. Race to 8 on the loser's side is very short against good players in a tournament that traditionally has always been to 11. The US Open ran 11 for many years without scheduling problems so I don't know why it needs to be trimmed to 9, but if it does then going even shorter was hard to take. Hard to fly out and take a week off and have such limited opportunity at the table.

Other than quicker play and longer sets I felt it was perfect. And those are just my preferences as a player.

As for what went well, I feel the break rules are the best I've ever seen in a 9 ball tournament. The breaker still maintained an advantage and there were ample run outs from the break. However the players had to break firmly with a difficult to control cut break, one that had a small margin of error on the strike and also introduced quite a bit of unpredictability. Watching last year's players pop in the wing ball and float the one 1 rail in front of the corner repeatedly made the matches almost unwatchable to me. Knowing each break was going to have a lot of moving parts outside of the players' control made the matches some of the most enjoyable I've seen.
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Yes to longer sets. Races to to 9 and 8 are brutally short.
 
So post-US Open, FSR tops Matchroom 2023 rankings https://matchroompool.com/world-rankings/ , #3 on WPA ranking https://wpapool.com/ranking/ , #4 on Fargorate. :D
Max Lechner and Wu Kun Lin join the 800 Club. 32 members though it excludes unofficial less active members like Raga and Chen Siming who is first female member. I am surprised that Chris Melling (787) has not joined the club. Though we cannot totally rely on Fargorate for the top players as I am guessing the margin of error is maybe 10, 20 points :LOL:
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Average win % (by racks/frames) of top 16 is only about 60% . For every 5 racks, the top players on average win 3 and lose 2.
top16stats.JPG
 
Island Drive said:
Surprising Mika's not in there.
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It's possible that he didn't get a spot, although I don't really know. Some players I spoke to indicated that they had tried to get into the Ohio Open but were denied a spot in the field, which was capped at 64 players.
 
Interesting how Fargo seems to be getting some rating inflation. In 2017 there were only 11 players ranked 800 or above:

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