Pool Cue News and Review

Well, the Hopkins shootout is just around the corner and despite the desperate pleas from pool players to have someone else foot the bill for their entry, it seems that the shootout is going to fall a little short of… “one miiilllliiiooon dollars”. As of their last update on 7/24, there are now 7 players who have bought in (Allen Sr. inlcuded) for a total pot of $35,000. Just 3 more buyins and it’ll be worth as much as the annual Billiards International Tournament of Champions event.

I actually find this somewhat surprising. You see players willing to throw $5k down for a TAR event, but for this thing I guess its too much risk and not enough reward. The funniest thing about the shootout though is that they’re listing 174 people who are “interested” in playing. Sure, only 7 have paid, but the other 167 are “interested”.  Seems like you could say just about anyone is “interested” in playing. For those who care, here’s the list of actual entries:

Allen Hopkins Sr.
Corey Deuel
Francisco Bustamante
Dennis Hatch
Evan Broxmeyer
Daryl Peach
Marlon Manalo

Just 193 players to go to… oh wait, he doesn’t even have that many players “interested”… nevermind.

Over the weekend, Predator presented the first Jim Murnak Women’s Open, which drew some very familiar names including Emily “Yummy” Duddy, Caroline Pao and one of my favorite WPBAers, the always foxy Liz Ford.  So the newsworthy thing here is that Liz and Iris Ranola decided to call it a tie rather than play out the match to determine the winner and split the title.

Now you all know how much I dig Liz Ford and really I don’t blame her or Iris for calling it considering how late in the evening it was, but the reality is that this sort of thinig should not have been allowed.  In pro matches, you don’t shake hands and call it a tie, especially in the championships.  Sure, we’re not talking about big money here, but that’s not the point.  Could you imagine Nadal and Federer saying “let’s just split the title”?

There have been rumblings about this sort of thing happening for years, either when it is done officially as Liz and Iris did or with backroom private deals where the two finalists agree to split the winnings regardless of who actually wins the final match.  The promoter of this event should have either told the players to play out the final match or if they were both too tired, to play it the next morning.  Sharing a title simply shouldn’t be an option.  If pool ever wants to be taken seriously as a professional sport, a good first step would be playing out the championship matches.

Is it just me, or did yesterday’s 9 Ball event on ESPN look better than pretty much any other televised pool event?  The players looked good (the women at least), the editing was sharper, hell, event the commentating was better.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen Ga Young Kim look this good on TV.  Some of the players could have classed it up a bit, but overall I thought it came off really well.

The one thing that shocked the hell out of me though was the fact that out of all the WPBAers, Jasmin looked the worst (in both her game and the way she dressed).  Her play was sloppy and her black pants, black shirt, hair in a bobby pin look is getting pretty tired.  Even little Brit-Brit Kostanian looked good (until her match was over and she donned the t-shirt, sweat pants and flip flops of course).  In fact, I’d go so far as to say she was looking downright foxy.

We’ll see what the final ratings are, but hats off to ESPN and the BCA for putting on a killer show.

Rachael, Rachael, Rachael.   What can you say about Rachael Abbink.  The girl has more looks than anyone I know in this business.  Some are good, but some are, well, I’m sure everyone’s seen her deer in the headlights, purple bra strap sportin’ cover shot from Inside Pool.  She’s not really my type, but I get more comments from readers telling me that she belongs on the hottie list than any other player (that currently isn’t listed anyway).  Plus, the girl’s got a seriously rockin’ bod and she’s Canadian eh!

What’s interesting about Rachael is that when she’s not trying to pose, she looks pretty damn foxy.  Its just those poses that really kill it for me.  I mean check out the picture below of her with last month’s hottie Emily Duddy.  How can this be the same girl that is in the high school yearbook picture she took for her WPBA profile page?  She and Emily are freakin’ megaswish!  But then we look back to that awful IP cover and just try to figure out what happened.

At any rate, there you have it… our hottie of the month for July 2008.  If you want to see more of Rachael, just head over to her MySpace page. Hopefully we’ll see her on the tour again soon, since she hasn’t shown up for the last couple WPBA events.  By the way, anyone know what ever happened with her interviewing gig with Inside Pool?  Seems that she was replaced with Vanessa de la Cuetarrrrra…

You gotta have love for Mike Janis. The guy works his ass off promoting the Viking Tour and clearly has much love for the game. While he hasn’t made the official announcement yet, it appears that Mike has succeeded where so many others have failed. If you read between the lines of his post on AZ Billiards, it is pretty clear that he has signed on Roaring Lion Energy Drink as a sponsor for the Viking Tour. Very nice pull Janis.

If we can learn anything from other industries that have gone through similar rough times <cough>NASCAR<cough>, we know that industry sponsors are simply not the answer. You need to go outside the industry and pull sponsors from other worlds. Beer, energy drinks, whatever you can get. The idea is that the billiards industry has a very interesting demographic and there should be interest in tapping that demo from other industries. Energy drinks are a great match considering the fact that most pool is played in bars at all hours of the evening.

Billiards industry, listen up and take a lesson from this. Outside sponsors are there, you just have to be willing to work in order to get them.