Category: Features

8 FINALIST

The 2012 USBA National Three-Cushion Championship Tournament, played for the second consecutive year at the Las Vegas Tropicana Hotel as part of the ACS national tournament week, ended in dramatic fashion as defending champion Pedro Piedrabuena overcame a twelve point deficit with a scorching finish to defeat Mazin Shooni 40 to 33 in 34 innings.  With the victory, Piedrabuena not only defended his crown but also notched his 5th national championship title.

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In Memory of Steve Elzinga.

Steve passed away on April 13, 2012 at the age of 63 from Lung Cancer. Born on March 24,1949 and lived in Grand Rapid MI.

One of Steve interests was Ski Diving and had 720 jumps to his name during the years of 1985 to 1993.

He also liked to play billiards and had played it for 40 or so yrs. Steve helped to promote the game by filming and streaming live 3-cushion tournaments over the course of 4 yrs. His streaming partner Michael Christenson a very close friend of Steve’s worked together and both helped a lot of people on the forums and helped a lot of streamers get started and produce better streams.

His name here was sde and was Mi_Billiards and sde on the streams.

Steve was a proud Viet Nam vet and was buried with honors at the Ft. Custer memorial cemetery in Battle Creek Michigan.

Steve was a great friend and will be surely missed by!!

Pedro Piedrabuena played a great final in Maywood.

MAYWOOD – The 40-year-old Pedro Piedrabuena from San Diego in Calyfornia has won the Open USBA three cushion tournament in Maywood. In the finals he defeated Hugo Pattino, the number one on the ranking, in a magnificent match: 30 points in eight innings (30-16).

The tournament, with a total prize money of $ 17.000, was played in the Eight ball billiards center in Maywood and was part of the Open tournament series of the USBA.

Forty players were divided into 5 groups of 8 players, playing round robin. The top 2 finishers from each group advanced to the semifinals. The top USBA-ranked A-players were seeded into the qualification groups, one per group.

 Shooters, a major pool room just outside of Kansas City, was host to 3-cushion billiards star Mazin Shooni on May 20. Mazin conducted a clinic for four local players””Travis Gallup, Stan Lombardo, Bob Mansky, and Dennis Reinecker””in the afternoon, and that evening he put on an exhibition before an attentive and appreciative audience. Both events were on Shooter’s newly recovered Gabriels Imperator table.

 Day 2 Schedule will be posted later tonight with 1st round results

 THE PRELIM CHARTS

The game is eight-ball and you have the solids. The 8-ball is blocking the corner pocket. It wouldn’t help to make the 7-ball, and while there are various ways to play safe off the right side of the 3-ball, they don’t improve your chances, and they give your opponent a chance to play safe in return. An ingenious play is to hit the 3-ball squarely with low backspin so that it banks off the end rail and back into cueball.