Vaillaincourt Wins in Gatineau & Valleyfield

Photo taken from Webillard.com

By: Markus Noé

Jean Vaillaincourt has had his second monster performance in the past month, as he won both the A.B.O tour stop in Gatineau along with a AA event in Valleyfield the following day. This comes just a few weeks after his impressive showing at the Quebéc Provincials held at Le Skratch Laval, where he finished runner up in both the AA and AAA divisions.

The weekend started for Vaillaincourt at Terminus Billiards in Gatineau, where 30 players showed up to take part in the third tour stop of the season.  Here he went undefeated to the finals where he met up with one of my practice partners out of Rack-M-Up Billiards, Platon Liolios. Until the conclusion of this tournament Liolios was ranked a B player meaning that in this handicap format he would get some games from Vaillaincourt who is ranked AAA on this circuit.

Platon Liolios

Liolios has been in fine form this season going deep in each of the three tournaments and is the current points leader. However Vaillaincourt, who has been supremely confident this season and has been virtually unbeatable won this match in a landslide. On a positive note for Liolios, he has another final appearance under his belt and has achieved his goal of being bumped up to A caliber player.

Payouts
1. Jean Vaillancourt $400
2. Platon Liolios $200
3. Christine Gauthier $105
4. Neil Ayotte $105

Dooly's Valleyfield 

The following day Justin "Killer" Miller and myself drove up to Valleyfield, QC to take a shot at the AA event. Here we ran into Vaillancourt who was fresh off his victory from the day before. Once again he chugged along going undefeated all the way until the A side final. There he met up with Christian Isabelle who has been one of the players to beat as of late on the AA circuit in order to win. Vaillancourt finally suffered his first lost of weekend 9-3 forcing him the the B side final.

In the losers side final he played Patrice Brunelle where he won 7-5. This set up the rematch of the winners side final and Vaillancourt returned the favour, beating Isabelle 9-3 to win the title. Despite the final loss for Isabelle, a congratulations is still in order because with this performance he has been bumped up to AAA.

Hanna Kwon 

On a side note the "Korean Assassin" has the AA division abuzz in the Québec Federation with two successful 5/6 finishes in back to back weeks. For many, seeing a women play at this high caliber is something they have never witnessed before and both this weekend and last at El Jumelgi  she has drawn a crowd and gained fans. The exposure that she has gotten these past few weeks has been enough for talks to have begun on an exhibition match to take place. The word is that her opponent would be one of the greatest female players to ever come out of Québec, Veronique Menard. If this match happens we will have all the details here at Cue Sport Nation


Payouts

Vaillancourt, Jean #948	1	380 $
Isabelle, Christian #3122	2	275 $
Brunelle, Patrice #975	3	200 $
Filiatrault, Sylvain #3642	4	140 $
Kwon, Hanna #3990	5 - 6	85 $
Pasquier, Laurent #3799	5 - 6	85 $