ABSA Open B-Grade Snooker
November 3rd, 2009
Held at the ACBS Clubrooms : 25 October 2009
Section play was a one-frame round robin, and one-frame snooker always produces some surprises. Because scores were not kept and qualifying was based on wins, there were two secitons that required play-offs to see who qualified and they were both different situations.
Section 2 saw three players tied for second position, so one player drew a bye, and the winner of the other two played the player with a bye and the winner of this pairing was the qualifier.
In Section 4 three players were tied for winner and runner-up positions. Once again one player drew a bye, but this time the loser of the other two played the player who drew the bye and the winner of this was the other qualifier. Winner and runner-up were then determined by who beat who in Section Play.
In Post-Section play the format was best of three frames. Roy Clark beat David Gourley 2/1, Barry Littlechild beat Kerry Bell 2/0 (both black to win frames), Jonathan Cox beat John Rehman 2/1, Sanjay Kumar beat Victor Tangihaere 2/0.
Clark and Littlechild had a chatty Semi-final with Clarke winning 2/1 after Littlechild potted the pink to win 2/0, but went in off it. Kumar beat Cox 2/0 in the other Semi-final.
The Final between Kumar and Clark was a very open match. Kumar was probably the favourite after recent success in the Clubs NZ North Island Pairs and runner-up in the ABSA/Manurewa BNZ 3000 tournament. Kumar eventually won, but not without a few anxious moments. Clark won the first frame and in the third, Kumar was 47 ahead with two reds left. Clark eventually got a black with the second to last red and snookered Kumar who missed, then got a black with the last red and so could draw with the lot. Kumar then decided he needed to be more careful and snookered Clark on the yellow. It wasn’t a hard snooker but Clark missed and Kumar finally won 2/1.
The Plate event was won by Andrew Charleston over Anaru Tamehana.
Quarter-finals: R Clark bt D Gourley 2/1, B Littlechild bt K Bell 2/0, J Cox bt J Rehman 2/1, S Kumar bt V Tangihaere 2/0.
Semi-finals: R Clark bt B Littlechild 2/1, S Kumar bt J Cox 2/0.
Final: S Kumar bt R Clark 2/1.
Highest Break: R Clark (59)
