Saikam comes back from the loss side to claim Cuetec DFW 9-Ball Tour title at Stixx & Stones
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Matt Wilson, Gavin Mathew and Vishwanath Reddy Saikam
They call him “Vish” on the Cuetec DFW 9-Ball Tour, which is shorthand for Vishwanath Reddy Saikam and he enters our database for the first time, after coming from the loss side to win the tour’s $1,000-added Stop #7, which drew 64 entrants to Stixx and Stones in Lewisville, TX this past weekend (July 19-20). We do know that he entered the event with a 657 FargoRate, in spite of there being no record of him with FargoRate under his name or any variation of it; no rate, no ‘robustness’ indication.
This suggests some level of personal awareness about him as a competitor, likely within the Dallas/Fort Worth area. His victory suggests that if nothing else, the FargoRate he was assigned for the tournament was well-calculated. The event was, as usual for the tour, split into high side and low side brackets at the start. “Vish” began in the high side bracket, his FargoRate being just above midway between the highest in the high-bracket range (720) and the lowest (562). The low-side bracket competitors ranged from a low of 352 and a high of 557.
Though Saikam would come back from a double-hill hot seat loss versus Matt Wilson and face him again in the final, twice, it should be noted that the tour’s youngest competitor, Gavin Mathew (11), who lost his opening-round match to Muhammad Gohar, mounted a fierce, nine-match (one forfeit), loss-side campaign that came within a match (against Saikam) of putting him into the final. (more on this later).
Saikam’s five-match run to the hot seat match got underway with a few relatively dominating performances, beginning with a 7-1 victory over Pete Stovall, a 7-3 win over Gerardo Perez and a 7-4 win over tour veteran, Neil Sidawi. Easton Rogers battled him to double hill in one of the winners’ side quarterfinals, but Saikam did advance to draw Sammy Downs in a winners’ side semifinal.
From the other end of the bracket, Wilson went back and forth, from the ‘easy’ (though we acknowledge that nothing about any match is ever just ‘easy’) to the challenging. Good start, 7-1, over James Brown, followed by a 6-3 win over Highway Sigadi, and a 6-2 victory versus Billy Rogers. Giving up four ‘beads on the wire’ in a race to 8 against the lowest FargoRated competitor in the field, Matthew Hooten, Wilson shut him out and drew Tom Vicario in the other winners’ side semifinal.
Saikam defeated Downs 7-4, as Wilson sent Vicario to the loss side 6-4. Wilson claimed the hot seat over Saikam 6-5 (Saikam racing to 8).
When Downs showed up on the loss side and met up with Gavin Mathew, the youngster was seven matches into his loss-side winning streak. He’d benefited from an opening-round forfeit and proceeded to win his first four matches by an aggregate game score of 30-3, or, put another way, winning nine out of every 10 games he played. He then added 10 game wins in a 10-3 win over Matthew Hooten, which, because Hooten was awarded six ‘beads on the wire’ in their race to 10, was a double-hill victory. Gavin advanced to loss-side win #7 with a 7-4 victory over William Banda and drew Downs.
Vicario came over to the loss side and picked up Gerardo Perez, who’d followed his second-round loss to Saikam with six straight wins, one of which (against Jason Gladden) had gone double-hill. After advancing past that challenge, Perez eliminated Shawn Morris 7-3 and Easton Rogers 7-2 (both straight-up races to 7).
Gavin Mathew chalked up loss-side win #7 with a 7-4 victory over Downs. Perez downed Vicario 9-2 to join Mathew in the quarterfinals. Mathew extended his own loss-side streak (to 8) and stopped the Perez streak with a 7-1 victory in those quarterfinals.
Separated by 56 FargoRate points, Saikam (657) and Mathew (601), racing to 7 came within a game of double-hill, but Saikam edged out in front to win the semifinal by two (7-5) and advance to take a double-shot at Wilson, awaiting him in the hot seat.
Awarding Wilson two ‘beads on the wire’ in a race to 8, Saikam made the ‘beads’ point moot, by shutting him out in the opening set. According to digitalpool time stamps, Wilson had been more or less idle for just over two hours, following his claim to the hot seat, which may have been instrumental in the first-set result. Wilson did marginally better in the second set, but “Vish” claimed the title with an 8-4 win.
Tour representatives thanked the ownership and staff at Stixx & Stones for their hospitality, along with title sponsor Cuetec Cues and Associated Business Sponsor, Cuetec Billiards (Albert Trujillo). The next stop on the Cuetec DFW 9-Ball Tour, scheduled for August 16-17, will be hosted by Rusty’s in Fort Worth, TX.
