UPA Finals at Bicycle Club Down to Final Four

UPA Finals at Bicycle Club Down to Final Four By Hilary Morse, InsidePOOL MagazineOnly four players are left at the UPA championship event at the Bicycle Club Casino in Bell Gardens, CA, to which over 500 people have come to watch. The day started with 24 of the best players in the world, and after 17 hours of grueling pool, the four left standing are Mika “Iceman” Immonen and Ralf “The Surgeon” Souquet on the winners’ side and Charlie “The Korean Dragon” Williams and Efren “The Magician” Reyes on the one-loss side.
Johnny Archer had his hands full as he lost his first match to “Napoleon” Marcus Chamat. The match went back and forth until Chamat was able to pull off the 11-9 win. After sinking the 9 ball, Chamat jumped up and started yelling to the audience, “Yah! Yah!” and running around with a big grin on his face giving audience members high fives. Chamat’s enthusiasm for the game is legendary. on the one-loss side, Ronnie “Everything’s Funny When You’re Winning Big Money” Wiseman played Archer. At 9-9, Archer missed a crucial straight-in 6 ball to put Wiseman on the hill and to break-and-run the final rack to beat Archer 11-9.Nick Varner was not his usual self as Alex Pagulayan knocked him to the west side 11-5 and then was eliminated by Charlie Williams. Varner started the match with Williams stuck 3 games throughout the set until the score was 9-9. Williams broke and ran out to reach the hill with Varner at 9 and then in the next rack ran to the 4, played safe and got ball in hand to defeat Varner 11-9.“Come on, baby,” Mika Immonen said, trying to coax the cueball to get position and run the final rack. “Iceman” beat Jose Parica in a tough hill-hill battle. Parica ended up matching up with fellow Filipino Santos Sambajon, Jr., who beat Rodney Morris in the preceding match. Parica ended up losing to Sambajon 11-9. Afterwards, Sambajon lost his next match to Williams.On the winners’ side, Ralf Souquet and Marcus Chamat had a nail-biting hill-hill match. Chamat made a 2-9 combo to go up 9-8, and in the next game, he broke and made nothing. Souquet played safe, but a miss on the 1 put his opponent on the hill. The following rack, Souquet ended up with a combination on the 9 to put the score at 10-9 Chamat. The German won the next rack, making it a hill-hill match. In the final rack, Chamat was on his way to a run-out when he hooked himself on the 5 ball and was forced to kick at it, leaving Souquet a wide-open table to score an 11-10 win. Efren Reyes gave “The Lion” a tough rematch, kicking in two unbelievable shots and defeating Pagulayan 11-5. Marcus Chamat and Charlie Williams faced off in the one-loss side, where Williams ended up with the 11-8 victory over Chamat.On Sunday, the grand finale will include a match for the hot seat between Immonen and Souquet and the quarterfinal match between Charlie Williams and Efren Reyes. Visit InsidePOOL for the latest in the sport of billiards and pool.

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