Robertson & Johnson split top prizes at Jersey Girl Billiards’ Krome Klassic event
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Blake Johnson and Scott Robertson
Chane comes from the loss side to claim Invitational Natural Born Women’s title
Both of the winners of last weekend’s (June 27-29) main event of the $2,000-added Krome Klassic in North Little Rock, Arkansas, a production of Jersey Girl Billiards, will now have entered the AZBilliards’ pool player database for the first time. It’s not a unique experience in this day and age of being able to find a weekend pool tournament within relatively easy driving distance from wherever one happens to be. However, given the fact that as a ‘relative’ unknown in a very large field like the Jersey Girl Billiards’ Krome Classic (135 entrants, not including the concurrently-run Natural Born Women’s Tournament which drew 18 on the same weekend), it is somewhat extraordinary that not just one but two such competitors worked their way through separate brackets in such large fields and reached a point at which they opted out of a final match and split the top two prizes; a substantial chunk of change for someone, or sometwo, who have not previously engaged in any generally known or recorded, cash-winning circumstances at a pool table.
It’s probably what’s getting a lot of newcomers off the couch or out of their local, coin-op pool table bar and out on the road to give it a whirl. It’s like an inner Captain Picard has assessed the risk-reward probabilities, pointed a finger at the event, and serious about it, says “Engage.” Good for the pool world, as it draws a lot of people into the game(s). Not perhaps as good for the 111 main-event competitors in this most recent iteration of the Jersey Girl Billiards’ ongoing series of events who went home, minus the expenses they incurred to get them there (the event paid out the top 24 finishers). But as another entertainment reference might put it, with a Bruce Willis-like wry grin, “Welcome to the party, pal!”
That said, congratulations to Scott Robertson, the ‘official’ winner, who fought his battles in the High Side bracket of the main event, and ‘official’ runner-up, Blake Johnson, from the Low Side. They both went undefeated through their respective brackets and lost a single match in the Final Four bracket before deciding on the split of the top two cash prizes.
As usual with Jersey Girl Billiards, there are other avenues which lead to prize money, including a Friday night Warm Up, which this time drew 57 entrants, a Second Chance event (48) and the Natural Born Women’s tournament (18). Shane Jones won the races-to-2 Warm-Up event, while Marjorie Purvis offset her ‘out of the money’ finish in the women’s event with a come-from-the-loss-side, Second Chance win.
Kathy Chane and Laycee King, now also newcomers to the AZBilliards’ database, battled three times for the Natural Born Women’s title; hot seat and two sets of a double-elimination final. Chane lost the first match, but won the last two.
King’s trip was almost sidetracked in the opening round, when she fought and won a double-hill match against Jody Betteron. She gave up a total of only three racks over the next three games, which put her into the hot seat match. Chane, in the meantime, gave up a total of only two racks in the three games she played to get to the same place. She was awarded a single ‘bead on the wire’ that she didn’t end up needing in two of those matches. In a double-hill, straight-up race to 3, King claimed the hot seat over Chane.
Chane moved to the loss side’s semifinal and drew a rematch against Dawanna Sorrows, whom she’d shut out in the second round. Sorrow moved over to the loss side and won four straight that included back-to-back, double-hill wins over Jody Betterton and Emily White, along with a quarterfinal shutout over Rhannee Monroe. Chane shut Sorrow out for a second, and as it turned out, third shot against Chane.
Chane apparently wanted no part of the double-hill, hot-seat-match shenanigans versus King that had added a semifinal match to her day’s work. In their straight-up races to 3 in the two-set finals, Chane allowed King one rack in each of them to claim the Natural Born Women’s title. Before she’d played and won the title, she had won three on the winners’ side of the main event’s Low Side bracket and been eliminated on the loss side, to finish in the (individual bracket) tie for 9th/12th.
As Johnson, Robertson go undefeated, Bowman and Headrick join Final Four from loss side
Blake Johnson played eight matches, going undefeated through the first six on the Low Side bracket, to arrive at the point where he was in a position to negotiate the main-event prize split with Scott Robertson. It took Robertson nine High Side matches and he went undefeated through the first six of them as well.
Johnson and Paul Headrick, who would become two of the event’s Final Four, worked their way through the bracket to face opponents in a winners’ side quarterfinal; Johnson versus Jonah Freeman, Headrick against Joe Noe.
Kathy Chane
Headrick shut Noe out, as Johnson was sending Freeman to the loss side 4-1. Johnson picked up and defeated Michael Kip Sanders 5-1 in a winners’ side semifinal and was joined in the hot seat match by Headrick, who’d chalked up his second straight shutout in the other winners’ side semifinal versus Brett Morin. Johnson, with one ‘bead on the wire’ in a race to 5, claimed the hot seat 4-1 over Headrick and became the Low Side’s first entrant into the Final Four.
Headrick headed on over to the loss-side semifinal for a rematch against Morin, who’d followed his earlier shutout loss with victories over Shane Griffin and in the quarterfinals, Daniel Harkness, both 4-2. Headrick put a stop to that short run with a 5-2, second win over Morin and became the 2nd Low Side member of the Final Four.
Scott Robertson and Shane Jones came at each from the opposite ends of the High Side bracket that brought Robertson to a winners’ side quarterfinal against Benny Walters, and Jones to a match against Shannon Sutter. Jones downed Sutter 9-3 and then survived a double-hill battle against Dawayne Pearson to get into the hot seat match. Robertson got by Walters 6-5 (Walters racing to 9) and joined him.
Robertson grabbed the hot seat 6-6 (Jones racing to 9) and joined the Final Four. Jones moved to the semifinal and picked up Ross Bowman, who’d followed his winners’ side loss to Peterson with a double-hill win over Shannon Sutter and in the quarterfinals, a 6-4 win over Dawayne Pearson. With Jones racing to 9 in the High Side semifinals, Bowman became the last piece of the Final Four puzzle with a 6-7 win.
Johnson and Robertson squared off in the main-event’s overall hot seat match. Johnson got ‘beads on the wire,’ two of them in a race-to-6 match that, not surprisingly, went double-hill. Johnson claimed the seat 4-5.
Headrick and Bowman had gone at it in the event’s ‘overall’ quarterfinal; Headrick with the ‘beads,’ one of them in a race to 6. It was Headrick who advanced, 5-2, to meet up with Robertson in the semifinal. Robertson put Headrick into third place with a 6-3 win and turned back for a second, and potentially third crack at Johnson.
The probability of a second and possibly third, double-hill match loomed large; a lot at stake, mutual desires to claim the title, all at the tail end of a long weekend for both of them. The opening set of the true double-elimination battle didn’t play out that way. Johnson got two ‘beads’ in a race to 6, but Robertson allowed him only a single rack. At that point, they opted out of a second match and negotiated a split of the cash. A coin flip gave Robertson the official event title.
Chief Chaos Consultant Chrissy Perlowski thanked all of the competitors who came out to play, along with the ownership and staff at Krome Billiards for their hospitality, along with Accu-Rack by Outsville, InTheBox Sports, digitalpool.com (Zach Goldsmith, to include his assistant as TD) and the ‘queen,’ Rhonda Royal for her help.
The next Jersey Girl Billiards event, recently re-scheduled for the weekend of August 15-17, will be its Split Bracket, Nashville Cash Bash. The event will be hosted by J.O.B. Billiards in Madison, TN. Calendars should also be marked for the Jersey Girl Billiards’ Bayou Bash (Sept. 26-28 at Buffalo Billiards in Jefferson, LA) and the two, Split Bracket events at this year’s International Open; a 10-Ball (Nov. 13-16) and 9-Ball (Nov. 21-23).
