Falcon Tour In Drummondville This Weekend!

Billiard Heriot in Drummondville Québec located about an hour outside of Montreal on route to Quebec City, will host a Falcon Tour stop this weekend. A few weeks back Dooly's Neufchatel hosted the most recent stop and 47 players came to participate, this tied Terminus in Gatineau for the second highest number of players this season.

With this pool hall being located between Montreal and Québec City were most of the elite players AAA and above live, this has the potential to be another record turnout. The field in Neufchatel featured 12 Pro's, and many other top players. The Falcon Tour now in its 3rd season has seen professional participation increase a fair bit as well as seeing a lot of players in the AAA and Semi-Pro range come out of long hibernation now that there is an elite circuit to play on.

Dooly's Neufchatel is a beautiful venue with a great staff. Marco Sanchargrin a well known promoter in the province is the owner and for a chain it really feels like a mom and pop place that caters to the players. In the Finals it was a couple familiar foes facing off as Alain Martel and Danny Hewitt. In the winners side final they also met, with Danny Hewitt winning 9-5. In the third place match Martel played Joey Cicero who has been close a few times to winning his first Falcon Tour stop. He already had a finals appearance at La Patriote in December and a few other top finishes. However the seasoned "Dancing Bear" was once again too much for the young upstart Cicero as he fell 9-4.

In the final Martel revenged his earlier loss to Hewitt 11-8 to win his third event of the season. I am accepting sponsorship as always to help cover expenses to go and cover the event this weekend. It is a great and cheap way to advertise your business as no contribution is to small. Also if you are a frequent reader of Cue Sport Nation it is a great way to support us and to make sure the updates keep on coming. Email transfer and receipts are available! Hope to see many new faces this weekend! 

Once again I would like the thank my main sponsor for this event, Rack-M-Up Billiards in Cornwall Ontario!

Rack-M-Up Billiards: Gauthier Wins AAA Tournament

Runner-up Marc "Jesus" Malette and Do Gauthier 

By: Markus Noé

Saturday February 24th Rack-M-Up Billiards held a rare event these days in Ontario, a AAA and under non-handicap 9 Ball tournament. With only about two weeks notice players from Ottawa/Gatineau and Montreal came to participate. Originally the field was slated to be filled at 24 however do to overwhelming interest owner of the room and tournament director Doug Disotell opened the field to 32. The entry was $40 it was races to 7 on the winners side and 6 on the losers, as well as alternative break.

When player registration ended at 9:45 there was 31 participants and shortly after the player auction began. This is better known as a "Calcutta," and it is where the players are auctioned off with the winners getting an extra prize fund. Each player that is auctioned off has the option to buy 50% of themselves back in order to be eligible for the side pot. The players who all tied for the highest bids which is a good indicator of who the favourites are were, Marc Malette, Jean-Francois Dorais, Jody Roy. The overall side pot was $1720

Two of the betting favourites met up right away as Roy sent Dorais over to the one loss side in the first match. Marc Malette also found himself on the losers side at the hands of Do Gauthier a newly ranked AAA in the Québec Federation who has been playing well as of late. Most of this field was was fairly evenly matched despite no handicap which made for an entertaining day. That being said some lower ranked players such as Daniel Sumon, Josh Levac, Cullen Arihote and J.R Cook stepped up for chance at gaining some experience and potentially as we like to say around here, "ruin someone's day." Levac and Arihote both were able to accomplish this feat both beating players ranked multiple levels above their own.

Third place finisher Mehdi Harraq with director Doug Disotell

Local favourite Jody Roy was on an impressive run beating two of the stronger players in the field, Luc Comptois and Dorais before meeting up with Mehdi Harraq in the winners side final 4. Harraq knocked Roy over to the losers side in this bracket and met up with Do Gauthier in the winners side final. Gauthier was down 3-0 to myself and kicked it up a gear to beat me 7-3. He carried this momentum into the hot-seat match making quick work of Harraq 7-3.

In the final Gauthier met up with local player Malette who worked hard winning 8 matches on the losers side to have his chance at redemption. It was looking good early for Malette as he lead 4-1 in this race to 7. However as he was doing all day Gauthier came all the way back to win 7-5 and win his second tournament in as many months. It should be noted that Malette has taken several years off playing and has recently come back to competitive play, this is his second time finishing in the top 2 in the last two events here.

Congratulations to all the winners! Also a big thank you to all the Québec players who came down, many of whom have been big supporters of Cue Sport Nation. It was a pleasure to see the same people support a great tournament in my home room. Doug Disotell did a fantastic job running the event smoothly as well as being the referee. There was not a single complaint all day and from what I heard from the players I know these tournaments can be a regular success.


Payouts Calcutta included

1. Do Gauthier $930

2. Marc Mallet $610

3. Mehdi Harraq $430

4. JF Dorais $290

5/6  Jody Roy/Markus Noé $190

7/8 Luc Comptois, Justin Miller $40

Falcon Tour Stop #7 Tailgators: Hewitt edges out Aupin to Claim 4th Win of the Season

Danny Hewitt photo courtesy of Shelley Anne-Marie Doran

By: Markus Noé

January 27-28th, Tailgators located in the Meriviale Mall in Neapean Ontario hosted the 7th stop of the Falcon Québec Pro Tour. 36 players came to participate with again the majority of players being from Québec. Chris Dempsey and Jason Robichaud two of the best players from the East Coast made the trek from New Brunswick , while Andy Aupin, Alain and Johnathan Lessard were the furthest traveling players from Ontario coming from Sudbury. My small homeroom of Rack-M-Up Billiards which only has 10, nine foot tables and one snooker table showed up in numbers as we had 7 who made the hour trip to Ottawa. Out of those 7 we had every class represented from C through to Pro.

Going into this weekend we knew that some regulars on the tour such as Joey Cicero, Alain Martel and Martin Daigle would be missing due to prior engagements. Also there was a semi pro tournament just outside of Montreal that kept regulars such as Marco Caron and Eric Cloutier away. However with so many players within reasonable driving distance to Ottawa, Ontario 36 players was a disappointing turnout for organizers. 

Perhaps that the Ottawa Barbox Championships which is historically well attended and filled again this year was only a few weeks before played a factor, it should be noted that Tailgators main focus and most popular game is Barbox 8 Ball. However it was a bit baffling to myself that there was  significant amount of good amateurs to high ranking players who frequent and play the weekly leagues at Tailgators that did not attend.

In contrast the Falcon Tour as been averaging just over 40 players in each event this year. This includes pool rooms outside the densely populated cities of Montreal, Ottawa or Québec. The most disappointing part for people looking to grow this tour and promote pool overall, is that Tailgator's has such a big and beautiful venue in a prime location. It is basically directly between Québec City and Toronto and a few hours from Montreal. Between this area lies a huge percentage of  Canada's top players. If you factor all of this in, the potential for successful Pro Tournament is staggering.  I am mentioning this not to be critical, however to point out the importance of the Falcon Tour and a room like Tailgators is to the potential growth of pool. Ottawa/Gatineau has three great venue's in the region, Tailgators, Terminus, and Dooly's Ottawa. 

The Falcon Tour is the only Pro Tour in the country, it has been successful in Québec and New Brunswick in its first 3 years. If it takes off in the Ottawa/Gatineau region then it can potentially use this momentum to spring board itself into the Greater Toronto Area and then who knows. The issues for professional non handicap tournaments in Ontario is well documented and here is a solution. A common complaint in all tournaments and tours is there is not enough money to be won. However it is near impossible to grow and attract more sponsors that can help with added money if players do not show an interest. In cities like Ottawa/Gatineau, Montreal, Québec and Toronto fields of  64 to 128 are very possible especially with a staggered entry fee. The first move however needs to be made by player participation so organizers of the Falcon Tour Danny Hewitt and Luc Paquette have a strong product to show to potential sponsors. The saying "If you build it, they will come" comes to mind here.

Now that my little rant is over lets get to business. At the end of the first day there was not much report in the way of upsets because outside of Dany Nguyen and Danny Hewitt it was a fairly evenly matched field. Of course they met in the first round with Nguyen coming out on the short end of a 9-2 loss. The Falcon Tour plays down to the final 8 on day one. One of the final 4 matches on the winners side on day 2 included Pierre Normand vs Roger Miller which Normand won 9-8. The other was Hewitt vs new pro Seb Laramée, Hewitt won this one 9-5.

Andy Aupin photo courtesy of Shelley Anne-Marie Doran

On the losers side Andy Aupin a very capable but lesser known pro was charging through the bracket. After suffering his first lost to Hewitt he won his four next matches as follows;

Aupin 9 vs Alain Lessard 5

Aupin 9 vs Roger Miller 3

Aupin 9 vs Dany Nguyen 6

Aupin 9 vs Normand 4

This run on the losers allowed Aupin a second crack at the most dominate player on the Falcon Tour, Danny Hewitt. The final was a tightly contested match as Aupin fought back from an early deficit to tie this extended race to 11 at 10-10. Hewitt ended up taking the last game winning his 4th event out of 7 total tournaments this season. Congratulations to the winners of this event and thank you to Curtis Houlden and Morgan Bristow for providing an ideal venue for the tour. Finally thank you to Shelley Anne-Marie Doran for the great photo's her entire album of the event can be found at the Tailgators Facebook Page. 

The next event will be held near Québec City at Marco Sanschargin's pool room a well known local promoter. It is called Dooly's Neufchatel.  I will be in attendance to play and cover the event in detail, if you are interested in being a sponsor please feel free to contact me through Facebook either on the Cue Sport Nation Facebook page or my personal one. Look forward to seeing everyone in a few weeks!