Brotons downs Lampaan twice to claim Garden State Pool Tour title at Shooters Family Billiards
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Levie Lampaan and Michelle Brotons
Veterans of the Predator Tri-State and Garden State Pool Tours (GSPT), Michelle Brotons and Levie Lampaan battled twice to claim this past weekend’s (Sat., June 28) win on the GSPT; Brotons, looking for her first (recorded) regional tour victory since she won her first on the Tri-State Tour four years ago and another on the Mac Attack Tour, which went unrecorded. Lampaan was looking for his first since he went back-to-back with two wins on the GSPT in March and April of last year.
It’s hard to predict what exactly leads to the raising (or lowering) of a given FargoRate, but Brotons’ performance at this event will likely be added to FargoRate’s database of information used to calculate and when necessary, alter a competitor’s rate going forward. That rarely happens overnight, or as the result of a single, or even two tournaments. In both of her matches versus Lampaan, she was awarded four ‘beads on the wire’ in races to 8. She battled to within a game of double hill in the hot seat match and won the double-hill final. The scores indicate that Lampaan had chances in both matches but failed to capitalize on them. The ‘699 and under’ FargoRated, $100-added event drew 24 entrants to Shooters Family Billiards in Wayne, NJ.
It is also hard to know precisely how the FargoRate system determines the ‘races.’ It’s an algorithm that makes the decision and feeds it into the bracket. In her first match, Brotons was awarding three ‘beads on the wire’ to her opponent (Angel Mendez) in a race to 7. Mendez almost sidetracked Brotons’ eventual undefeated run in that first round by battling her to double hill. Brotons prevailed and went on to defeat Josue Alexander Martinez 6-1 in a straight-up race to 6, at which point, she was awarded a single ‘bead’ in a race to 6 against Jacob Guevara. She won that match 5-2 and drew Tri Chau in one of the winners’ side semifinals.
Lampaan, in the meantime, was awarding opponents between 2 and 4 ‘beads’ in races to 7 and 8, all the way to the final. To 8, he awarded 4 to Yaakov (Jacob) Relkin in the opening round and won it 8-2. To 7, he gave up 2 to Rafael Acosta, winning that match 7-3. Back to 8, he gave up 4 to Nicole Adams, won that match and drew Luis Jimenez in the other winners’ side semifinal.
Racing to 5 in her winners’ side semifinal, Brotons was awarded two ‘beads’ versus Chau (racing to 7), defeated him 5-2, and advanced to the hot seat match. Lampaan, giving up 3 in a race to 7, defeated Jimenez 7-2. With four ‘beads’ in their first race to 8, Brotons claimed the hot seat 4-6.
Jimenez and Chau moved to the loss side and ran right into their second straight loss. Jimenez drew Angel Mendez, who’d followed his double-hill loss to Brotons in the opening round by winning four straight, defeating opponents well above his ‘paygrade.’ Racing to 4, he was getting ‘beads on the wire’ in every one of those matches and defeated them all; Luis Arryo (0), Juan Pena (3), Peter Franco (3) and Logan Ringleben (4; racing to 7). Chau picked up David Marchant, who’d lost a 3rd round match to Jimenez and defeated Relkin 7-3 and Orion Woodward 7-2.
Mendez downed Jimenez 4-4 (Jimenez racing to 7), as Chau (with three ‘beads’ in a race to 6) fought to double hill before Marchant prevailed to join Mendez in the quarterfinals. Mendez could have used a few more ‘beads’ than he got (3) in his race to 7 against Marchant who shut him out for a shot at Lampaan in the semifinals that followed.
Lampaan and Marchant fought to an (almost) predictable double hill, before Lampaan earned his second shot at Brotons. In a way, the two matches that Brotons and Lampaan played to determine the event champion was corroborating evidence that at its best, the handicap system ‘works.’ Two closely-contested battles, indicating two, closely-matched competitors, played with their handicaps applied. The hot seat match came within a game of double hill and their second match was double hill. Brotons won them both to claim the event title.
By design, FargoRates don’t tend to shift dramatically as the result of a single tournament. Given what the system calls ‘robustness,’ a measure of how many tournament results have gone into her current rating, the result of one tournament at which she has defeated higher-ranked competitors is less significant than it would be with a smaller ‘sample’ of matches behind her. Given her ‘star’ rating in the FargoRate system, which means that her rating has been established through analysis of significant history of the matches that she’s played, it’ll take a few more examples of her defeating higher-rated opponents before the ‘needle’ will move enough to change the rating number. Soon, though, if she continues to perform at the levels she demonstrated this past weekend, she’ll see that rate elevate to a point where she has to work harder against certain opponents to attain the same result.
Tour director Dave Fitzpatrick thanked Kris Kemp and her Shooter’s Family Billiards staff for their hospitality, along with sponsors Brutal Game Gear, Off the Rail, Kamui, JFlower Cues & Cases, Outsville, Billiards Engineering, World Beaters, Hanshew Custom Cues, Bender Custom Cues, and Legend Billiards.
The GSPT will return to Shooters Family Billiards this weekend (July 26-27) for a ‘499 and under’ 9-Ball event.
