Romania’s Gindac Ciprian Gabriel downs both Archer and Roberts to claim Rack Race Stop #5
Rack & Grill III in SC hosts four March Madness events on St. Patrick’s Day weekend As Bette Davis, in 1950’s All About Eve became famous for saying, at a party, “Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night,” we’re off and running with a report on a four-event weekend at Mike […]
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Gindac Ciprian Gabriel
Rack & Grill III in SC hosts four March Madness events on St. Patrick’s Day weekend
As Bette Davis, in 1950’s All About Eve became famous for saying, at a party, “Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night,” we’re off and running with a report on a four-event weekend at Mike Newsome’s Rack and Grill III in Aiken, SC. The weekend was highlighted by the $1,000-added, 57-entrant Rack Race Stop #5 and also featured a $1,000-added, 21-entrant Mini One Pocket event, a $500-added, 16-team Jack and Jill event, and a $100-added, 8-entrant, 9-ball Second Chance tournament, won by former US Mosconi Cup team member (’95, ’96) and renowned cue maker, Mike Gulyassy.
Romania’s Gindac Ciprian Gabriel went undefeated to the hot seat in the Rack Race’s Stop #5. He was defeated, double hill, in the first set of a true double-elimination final by one of the Rack Race’s more prominent competitors, Josh Roberts, but came back to win the second set and claim his first (known) US title. He’s been adding cash-paying finishes to his AZBilliards’ profile since 2008 and had yet to record a win at any of the six recorded attempts (one per year) on varied European tours in which he had been competing since that time. Four of those cash finishes came in four straight years from 2008 to 2011 (inclusive). The most recent came in 2019 and then, 2023, prior to winning the event this past weekend.
That said, there were only two competitors at this event with a higher FargoRate than Gabriel’s 756; runner-up Josh Roberts’ 779 and Spain’s Francisco Diaz-Pizarro’s 784. Third-place finisher, Germany’s Tobias Hoiss was close (750), as were Johnny Archer (749) and Hunter White (739). Michael Laney (712) was the only other competitor in the ‘700’ range and there were four competitors without a FargoRate.
Gabriel defeated both Roberts and Johnny Archer, who, over the past three years of the Rack Race, have been the ‘marquee’ matchup, as they traded game, match and title wins. He opened with a 7-1 win over Wesley Burbage (467) and a 7-4 victory over Matt Collins (636) before facing two straight double-hill challenges from Timmy Prince (625) and Johnny Archer, which put him into a winners’ side semifinal against Michael Laney.
Meanwhile, Josh Roberts headed out on his trip to the hot-seat match, during which he would survive three, double-hill challenges. The first was encountered in his opening round against James Malphrus (458), prior to a shutout over George Spires (607) and a second, double-hill battle, against Tobias Hoiss. Roberts squared off against Cody Sones (672) in the other winners’ side semifinal.
Gabriel advanced to the hot seat match 7-3 over Laney, while Roberts got locked up in his third double-hill battle, against Sones. Roberts won it to join Gabriel, who then gave up only a single rack to him and claimed the hot seat.
Laney and Sones came over to the ‘dark side’ and walked right into their second straight loss. Scott Rabon, who’d lost a third-round match to Diaz-Pizarro, won three straight 5-2 matches before surviving a double-hill match which eliminated Archer and then, advanced to the quarterfinals 5-3 over Sones. Hoiss, who’d followed his loss to Roberts with loss-side wins over Charles Jones (1) and Diaz-Pizarro (2), defeated Laney 5-2 and joined Rabon in the quarterfinals. Hoiss made it four-in-a-loss-side row with a 5-1 victory over Rabon in those quarterfinals and then, had that modest loss-side run stopped by Roberts 5-3 in the semifinals.
It’s simple enough these days to discover competitors through one or a series of Internet searches. That and readily-available FargoRate information has had a way of putting full-time ‘hustlers’ out of business. By any measure, Roberts and Archer would have been the favorites, based on their history, at or away from the Rack Race. The likelihood (odds) that an unknown, whose total (recorded) cash winnings over the past 14 years were less than the top prize at Rack Race Stop #5, would win the event had to be astronomical. Whatever those odds might have been, they’d have gone up significantly when Roberts took the opening set of their true double-elimination final in a double-hill battle.
In a reduced race-to-5 in the second set, Gabriel downed Roberts 5-2 to claim the event title.
Roberts goes undefeated to claim the weekend’s Mini One Pocket title
He’s not that kind of guy, so Josh Roberts didn’t waste a lot of time ‘fist-pumping’ over the fact that Gabriel would not be competing in the $1,000-added One Pocket tournament. Neither would Johnny Archer. In fact, of the five opponents Roberts faced in nine matches of the Rack Race event, including the opponent he played twice (Hoiss) and the other one (Gabriel) that he faced three times, only one was among the 21 who’d signed on to play One Pocket (Nicholas Smith) and Roberts didn’t have to face him.
Roberts did, however, have to face Spain’s Francisco Diaz-Pizzaro, twice; hot seat and finals. There were only four competitors in the ‘700’ FargoRate range and it was the top two of them who were winner and runner-up; Roberts and Diaz-Pizarro.
Roberts touched all of the ‘possible score’ bases in his first three matches. He opened with a double-hill battle that he won versus Brett Underwood, shut out Chris Argenta and gave up a single rack to Scott Rabon, which set him up in a winners’ side semifinal against Larry Jackson.
Like Roberts, Diaz-Pizarro would chalk up all three score possibilities, starting with a double-hill win (David Ferguson) and two shutouts (Randy Flakes & Hunter White), to draw Matt Collins in the other winners’ side semifinal.
Two 3-1 scores put Roberts and Diaz-Pizarro into the hot seat match; Roberts over Jackson, Diaz-Pizarro over Collins. Another 3-1 score, Roberts over Diaz-Pizarro, put Roberts in the hot seat.
On the loss side, Jackson and Collins arrived and battled in 2-1 matches for advancement to the quarterfinals. Jackson lost his to Richard Kilgore, while Collins won his against Scott Rabon. Kilgore shut Collins out in those quarterfinals, but was himself shut out by Diaz-Pizarro in the semifinals.
Roberts made it clear that he wasn’t about to be runner-up in a second tournament on the same weekend. He shut Diaz-Pizarro out in what would prove to be the only set necessary in a double-elimination final and claimed the weekend’s One Pocket title.
Surprise win and appearance by pool vet/cue maker, Mike Gulyassy, highlights Second Chance
It’s ‘been a minute (or two)’ since we last reported on Mike Gulyassy’s career at the tables. According to a brief profile of him on the Gulyassy Cues Web Site (https://gulyassycues.com/about-mike-gulyassy/), Gulyassy, following a career that had spanned a few decades from the early 80s to the late 90s, was forced to retire when back issues became “increasingly difficult to manage.” In one of his (supposed-to-be) last appearances, at an event sanctioned by the Camel Tour, he “defeated Jimmy Reid, Alan Hopkins, Nick Varner, Efren Reyes and Dallas West in one day and was thinking (that it) might be a good time to . . retire.”
He’d been the BCA’s 8-Ball Amateur Champion in 1982, and chalked up a number of notable accomplishments as he shifted from amateur to professional status. He was a member of the US Mosconi Cup team in ’95 (when the US lost) and ’96 (when they won, thanks in part to Gulyassy’s ‘singles’ victory over Oliver Ortmann; the only ‘singles’ loss for Ortmann at that event). He was, during this time, affecting another shift, from playing with pool cues to making them. He founded Gulyassy Cues in the late 1980s, eventually creating the “ground-breaking” Sledgehammer Jump Break Cue and later, attaining the patent for the Ferrule tip.
All of this occurring before AZBilliards published its first pages on the Internet. Gulyassy’s first (recorded) appearance in our AZBilliards database of player profiles occurred in 2004, as he began an apparently ‘out of retirement’ series of appearances that would eventually include a runner-up finish at the Orange City Classic V, won by the late Ron Park. He would go on to win a stop on the Viking Tour in 2007, the Grady Senior’s Championship in 2008 and in his last (recorded with us) appearance in 2016, a 7th place finish on what was (at the time) the Viking Cues Q City 9-Ball Tour.
This past weekend, as part of the March Madness series of events hosted by Rack & Grill III in Aiken, SC, Gulyassy signed on to compete in a $100-added, Second Chance tournament, which drew eight entrants. He went undefeated through the field to chalk up his first (recorded) event win in 17 years.
He shut out his first opponent Donnie Stewart, survived a double-hill match against Nicholas Smith and claimed the hot seat over Stevie McClinton with a second shutout. McClinton downed Timmy Prince in the semifinals and in his rematch against Gulyassy in the finals, became Gulyassy’s third shutout victim.
The weekend’s Jack and Jill Tournament drew 16 teams and was more of a ‘lark’ than a knuckle-biting battle for the $800 dollar prize that was spread out over the top three finishing teams. As it happened, the two teams slated to compete in a final match, opted out of that match and split the top two prizes.
Team Prescott (Tracy Prescott, the Rack Race’s current points leader and Shanel Hall) went undefeated, downing Team Archer (Johnny Archer and Carrie Allman) to claim the hot seat. Team Archer was defeated by Team Nicolas (Nicolas and Julie Smith), which entered negotiations with Team Prescott for a split.
