I had to see it to believe it. Kevin Trudeau’s new International Pool Tour (IPT) held their first full field event July 23 through July 30, 2006 at the Venetian Hotel Convention Center in Las Vegas. The largest 1st place prize in pool tournament history was paid to Thorsten Hohmann of Germany at the end of a grueling week of pool.
The tournament format was a series of round robin groupings with the top four, three, or two finishers per group moving on to the next round. The game win percentage was used as a tie-breaker. This percentage was listed in a column at the end of the tournament board which looked like a golf leader board updated as soon as results became available. The roughly 50 foot board was on an elevated platform that had first and second round results on one side and the latter rounds on the other. Hohmann played a total of 357 games of 8-ball over 8 days. Round 1 took 2 days to complete and the final match with Marlon Manalo, a single race to 8, was the only match on Sunday, July 30. Even so, Hohmann played an average of 44 games per day against the best players in the world.
Trudeau tour is appropriately named. Players from 29 countries made it an International event. Only three players from the United States (Dave Matlock, Larry Nevel, and Gabe Owen) made the 5th round of 18 players and none made the final round robin group of six players. Hohmann and Manalo advanced with 4-1 records to the heads up final match. I watched them play three matches against each other in the 5th and 6th rounds in addition to the finals. Hohmann won all three matches with scores of 8-3, 8-1 and finally 8-7 for the $350,000 first place prize.
The best match I saw all week was Hohmann and Manalo’s first clash. Hohmann won the match 8 games to 3. Hohmann won the lag and began the match with a perfect break and run out. It was one of his five during the match. He didn’t make a ball on three breaks which Manalo ran out perfectly. After each of Manalo’s run outs, he returned the favor and broke dry. Hohmann ran each of those racks for 3 of his wins. The match statistics were eleven games, five break and run outs, and six dry breaks with the other player running out. Not a single missed shot, safety, or scratch on the break! It seemed to me that Hohmann’s break was the most consistent and among the most powerful at the IPT, and it was a crucial factor in his tournament victory.
I was very impressed with several players’ break shots. Larry Nevel, Charles Bryant, and Russian Evgeny Stalev were crushing the balls on the break. With the napped cloth and 4 ½ inch pockets, making balls on the break was many players’ biggest challenge. The next IPT event is in Reno, NV September 3-10 and I’ll bet all of the players will be working on their break shot before play starts. The tables will be the same Las Vegas Diamond tables without a change of the Gorina cloth for the Reno event. You can bet that the used cloth will make it even more difficult to pocket balls!
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