When Pat Fleming first announced that he wanted to step away from the “day to day” workings of Accu-Stats Video Productions, one of the reasons that he cited was the desire to spend time working more on his pool game. Apparently that work is paying off, as Fleming cruised through day one of last weekends New England Pool & Billiard Fall of Fame 9-Ball Open at Snookers in Providence, Rhode Island on March 4th – 5th undefeated.

Fleming made his way through day one of the field of 109 players with convincing wins over Dave Fontaine, Luca Bares, Steve Tavernier and Jim Prather. Sunday matches were looking like a repeat of the day one performance, as Fleming defeated Kevin Bauccio and Pete Genovese to get to the hot-seat match.

The hot-seat match turned out to be a clash of two different types of “experience”. Fleming used to run 100 balls every day in practice, but that practice was many years ago. Sossei has “current experience” on the Joss Tour, with well over 30 tour stop wins under his belt. Sossei came out on top of the hot-seat match with a 7-2 win to send Fleming to the one loss side.

On the left side of the board, Fleming ran into another tour regular, in the form of tour points leader Ron Casanzio. Casanzio has even more Joss Tour titles than Sossei, and just keeps winning. Fleming came through in the semi-final match though, and eliminated Casanzio in 3rd place 7-6.

The rematch between Sossei and Fleming in the finals looked to be just about complete with Sossei holding a 6-4 lead. Fleming wasn’t done though, as he came back to win three straight games, to win the first set 7-6. Sossei took a break and gave himself a pep talk. “ I took a bathroom break after the first set and I was thinking to myself if I play solid I will win” Sossei remembered. Sossei indeed did play solid and he did win, by the score of 7-4 in the second set.

Looking back after the event, Sossei had nothing but compliments for Fleming’s play all weekend. ““Pat was playing very solid. I don’t really remember him missing many balls on that tight table” said Sossei. “I hope when I’m his age, I’m playing half as good as he is”.

In Sunday’s second chance event, Jordan Emerson went undefeated through a field of 21 players to win his first career second chance title. Emerson defeated Mike Salerno for the hot-seat 3-1 and then defeated Brian Tierney 3-2, in the first set of the finals.

Lukas Fracasso-Verner’s victory at the 34th Annual Ocean State 9-Ball Championships, held under the auspices of the Joss Northeast 9-Ball Tour at Snooker’s in Providence, RI this past weekend (Nov. 12-13), put him over the top, making 2022 his best earnings year since his recorded earnings began seven years ago. Though he didn’t have to face the event’s defending champion and winner of the previous stop (#8) on the Joss Tour, Bucky Souvanthong, he did have to contend with Spain’s Jonas Souto, who was defeated by Souvanthong in a winners’ side quarterfinal and came back to challenge Fracasso-Verner in the finals. Souto was looking for his first reported (to us) win, anywhere, even though entering the tournament, he’d already earned (primarily in Europe) over three times the amount that Fracasso-Verner has earned in 2022. The $5,000-added event ($500 to a Second Chance Tournament) drew a full field of 128 entrants to Snooker’s.

Fracasso-Verner’s seven-match trip to the winners’ circle got him by Ashley Benoit, Derek Cunningham, Ray McNamara (double hill), Barry Hetherington and Mhet Vergara, before coming up against Bob Forchilli in one of the winners’ side semifinals. Jared Demalia, in the meantime, defeated Mike Zhu, Mike Crema, Chad Bazinet, Moritz Neuhausen and Matt Jarrell to arrive at his winners’ side semifinal versus defending champ, Souvanthong, who had just sent the eventual runner-up, Souto, to the loss side 7-4.

Fracasso-Verner gave up just one rack to Forchilli in advancing to the hot seat match. Demalia gave up four to Souvanthong and joined him. In the first of two straight double hill matches that he faced to claim the title, Fracasso-Verner first claimed the hot seat over Demalia.

On the loss side, Souvanthong ran into Germany’s Neuhausen, who, earlier in the month, had finished 9th in both the American 14:1 Straight Pool Championships and the following week’s International Open, before packing his bags and heading north to New England. Neuhausen had followed his loss to Demalia with victories over four opponents by an aggregate score of 20-4; Beau Powers (5-2), Frank Hernandez (1), Mhet Vergara (1) and Suad Kantarevic (1).

Jonas Souto had followed his loss to Souvanthong with victories over Jaydev Zaveri (1) and Tom Zippler (2) to pick up Forchilli. He downed Forchilli 5-1 to draw Neuhausen, who’d battled Souvanthong to double hill before spoiling the potential Souto/Souvanthong rematch. .

There was a bit of an exclamation point to the two matches that eventually put Souto into the finals against Fracasso-Verner. He arrived at the final match having not given up a single rack to either of his previous two opponents, shutting out Neuhausen in the quarterfinals and Jared Demalia in the semifinals.

He battled to double hill in the finals but Fracasso-Verner dropped the last 9-ball and claimed the event title, his second of the Joss NE Tour’s 2022 season.

Tour director Mike Zuglan thanked Regina and Steve Goulding, along with their Snooker’s staff for their hospitality, ongoing support of the tour and the live stream that was provided for this event. He also noted the continuing support of title sponsor Joss Cues, Turning Stone Resort Casino, Simonis Cloth, Poolonthenet.com, AZBilliards, Aramith, Billiards Press, and World Class Cue Care.

The 34th Annual Ocean State 9-Ball Championships were the last 2022 event of the ‘22/’23 season. The next stop on the tour, scheduled for the weekend of January 5-8, 2023 will be Turning Stone Classic XXXVI, as always, hosted by the Turning Stone Resort & Casino in Verona, NY. The field for this event is full, but Mike Zuglan is taking names on the waiting list, for players interested in competing in this Matchroom Pool Nineball Ranking event. Zuglan can be reached at 518-356-7163.

Mika Immonen won an all-star Joss NE 9-Ball Tour stop over the October 1st/2nd weekend at Raxx Pool Room & Grill in West Hempstead, NY.

With the US Open and International 9-Ball events coming up later in the month, some of the best players in the world are making their way to the east coast, and this event saw it’s fair share of them. Immonen was joined by World Champion Carlo Biado, recent Michigan Open runner-up Robbie Capito and Predator Canada Open Champion Chia Hua Chen (Amber) just to name a few.

Capito won his first match, a 9-6 decision over room owner Holden Chen, but then dropped a hill-hill match against Nick Torraca. Torraca would then lose his next one to tour regular Mhet Vergara 9-2. The win over Torraca moved Vergara into Sunday’s matches undefeated, where he joined Immonen, Biado and Chen.

Immonen had scored four comfortable wins on Saturday, with the most games he allowed to any one opponent being the five racks that South Africa’s Kyle Akaloo won in the last match of the day. Sunday proved to be a bit more challenging for Immonen as Vergara took him to hill-hill on Sunday morning before Immonen could pocket the case 9-ball. In the other winner’s side match on Sunday morning, Biado scored a one-sided 9-4 win over Chen. The clash between Immonen and Biado for the hot-seat was another close one, with Immonen prevailing 9-7.

On the one loss side, Chen defeated reigning Under 23 World Champion Moritz Neuhausen from Germany, 7-3 and then defeated another tour regular, Alex Osipov, 7-5. Her next match, against Biado in the semi-final, didn’t go any better than their first meeting, with Biado winning 7-3.

Fans in attendance might have been expecting another epic battle between Immonen and Biado in the finals, but Immonen had other ideas. He took complete control of the match early and ran away to a 9-3 win in one set.

Sunday’s second chance tournament saw Holden Chin with an undefeated run to first place. Chin had wins over Mikhail Kim, Pat Byrne, John Francisco, America’s #1 WPBA player Caroline Pao and Mike Renshaw by a combined scoreline of 15-3.

The Joss NE 9-Ball Tour will be back in action this weekend at Sharp Shooters Billiards & Sports Pub in Amsterdam, NY for another $1500/$500 added main event and second chance tournament.

The Joss NE 9-Ball Tour kicked off their 2022/2023 season with The Maine Event XIV at TJ’s Classic Billiards in Waterville, Maine on September 17th – 18th, and crowned a first time tour stop winner in local favorite Dave Hall.

Hall, from nearby Portland Maine, is one of the top players in the area and always does well when the Joss Tour comes to town. With all of that success though, he still had yet to win a tour stop. Hall kicked the weekend off with a hill-hill win over Doug Brown, and then got comfortable with wins over Mike Perry (9-1), Cody Porter (9-4) and Ray McNamara (9-5) to finish undefeated for the day.

Sunday kicked off with Hall taking on Alex Osipov for the hot-seat. In another hill-hill thriller, Osipov sent Hall to the left side of the board 9-8.

Ray McNamara was waiting for Hall on the one the loss side but was still unable to win more than five racks in their rematch, and lost the semi-final match to Hall 7-5. That set up Hall and Osipov for a rematch in the finals.

Being a true double elimination tournament, Hall would have to beat Osipov twice if he wanted to win his first Joss Tour title, and he did just that. Hall won the first set 9-7 and then the second set 7-5 for the tournament win.

Sunday’s second chance event saw Jeff Mosimann hold off an attempt by Doug Brown to duplicate Hall’s double dip. Mosimann took the hot-seat with a 3-0 win over John Francis. Brown won the first set of the final match 3-1, but dropped the second set 3-2 for Mosimann’s victory.

The Joss NE 9-Ball Tour will be back in action this weekend with stop 2 of the 2022/2023 season at Yale Billiards in Wallingford, Ct.