Amazin Billiards in Malden, MA hosted a USBA TOUR Open Tournament the weekend of September 13th. The room, which is a private club owned by Mazin Shooni, has 5 beautiful three-cushion tables along with many pool tables. It is a wonderful place to play. Eighteen players converged to compete with some of the country's top players, including Mazin Shooni, 2006 US Champion; Sonny Cho, 2005 US Champion; Miguel Torres, 2008 US Champion; Hugo Patino, 2003 and 2009 US Champion, as well as other top players such as Harry Pena, originally from Queens, NY, then moved to Colombia for several years before recently returning to Queens; Vicky Pineda from California who was visiting the New York area; Gilbert Najm who flew in from California and Jamil Isreal who flew in from Michigan.
With three groups of 6 players each in the preliminary rounds, the matches were played to 30 points. The top 2 from each group plus two wild-card third place finishers would advance to an 8-player round robin in the finals based on wins/losses, total points, head-to-head and points-against.
Winning the groups were Mazin Shooni, Harry Pena and Miguel Torres.
Second-place finishers were Sonny Cho, Hugo Patino and Joe DeAmato.
The two best third-place finishers were Gilbert Najm and Jim Shovak. Vicky Pineda just missed out on the finals because of points.
In the finals it was an 8-player round-robin to 30 points based on wins/losses, total points, head-to-head and points-against. Sonny Cho played the first few rounds undefeated and was playing strong. Hugo Patino lost two of his first three matches, one to Sonny Cho and the other to Gilbert Najm. Mazin Shooni lost an early round to Joe DeAmato. Harry Pena played very strong throughout and lost a real squeaker to Sonny Cho 30-29.
After 5 of the 7 rounds were completed, Sonny Cho was still undefeated and since everyone else had at least 2 losses, he only needed to win one more match to clinch victory and he did by easily defeating Jim Shovak. Sonny lost his last match to Mazin, but it didn't matter. Sonny was the king this day.
Bravo, Sonny Cho!
Looking for ALL the results? CLICK HERE!