Jesus Atencio
There are very few, two-player sports that one competitor can lose before he/she has been afforded the opportunity to participate. The introduction of an alternate-break format in the varied billiard sports was instituted to remove that particular oddity, thus preventing a circumstance allowing a single player the opportunity to ‘break and run’ his/her way to a match win. Rare though it was, it happened enough to lead to and eventually result in the format change. It doesn’t really alter the circumstances of a straight pool match because there are rarely any ‘scatter the balls all over the table’ breaks in the game. They occur if the person who drops the 13th ball in a given rack has managed to set him/herself up in a way that leads to a really good break, after dropping the 14th ball in a rack. Lee Van Corteza, as an example, won a match versus Omar Alshaheen at last November’s International Straight Pool Open by a score of 125-0. Alshaheen never got to the table.
This is mentioned in passing, as we take a look at the current state of affairs at the $15,000-added 2025 US Open 10-Ball Championships, which has drawn 37 entrants to Griff’s in Las Vegas this week (March 1-5). Play is scheduled to resume this afternoon, with a pair of semifinals at 5 p.m. EDT (Jesus Atencio versus Jeffrey De Luna) and 7 p.m. (EDT), featuring two members of the 2024 USA Mosconi Cup team – Shane Van Boening, who is the defending champion of this event and Billy Thorpe. The finals will follow, scheduled for 10 p.m. (EDT). The matches are governed by the ‘alternate break’ rule, which assures any potential viewers of the upcoming semifinals and finals that they’ll be watching a match between two opponents, not just a successive series of ‘break and runs’ executed by one or the other of them. All three matches will be viewable on Griff’s YouTube page at
As to how the final four got to this point, we’ll set the ‘wayback’ machine to 3 p.m. (EDT), this past Monday when it all got started in a double-elimination Stage 1, headed for a final eight on each side of the bracket, advancing them to a single-elimination Stage 2, which would payout all 16 of the competitors that got there.
All four of the semifinalists advanced to Stage 2 from the winners’ side of Stage 1’s double-elimination bracket. In races to 9, Van Boening advanced through three opponents with an aggregate score of 27-5. He started out with a 9-2 victory over Tony ‘T-Rex’ Chohan (available to watch on Griff’s TV on YouTube), followed by wins over Jaiden Barbour (2) and Tyrel Blowers (1). Billy Thorpe, with a bye, shut out Cody Booth and downed Max Eberle 9-4 to advance. Jeffrey De Luna got by Waleed Hashem (3) and Sergio Rivas (5), as Jesus Atencio was defeating Joseph Crugnale (3) and surviving a double-hill challenge from Ukraine’s Vitaliy Patsura, who was last year’s runner-up (also available on YouTube). Also advancing from Stage 1’s winners’ side were John Morra, Lee Vann Corteza, Oliver Szolnoki and Mark Estiola. In Estiola’s mini-bracket of 8, Las Vegas’ best-known teenager, Savannah Easton (15), had downed her first opponent, Marc Vidal Claramunt 9-7, before falling to Teddy Garrahan 9-3. Garrahan would advance and be defeated by Estiola 9-4.
On the loss side of the bracket, Easton was awarded a bye. Two matches away from advancement to Stage 2, she was defeated 9-5 by Roberto Gomez, who then survived a double-hill match against Eduard Brega to advance to Stage 2. Also advancing from the loss side were Sergio Rivas, Patsura, Ruslan Chinakhov, Max Eberle, Garrahan, Claramunt and Blowers.
As might have been anticipated, the matches tightened up considerably in the opening stages of the single-elimination push to the finals. Of the 12 matches played to arrive at the event semifinals, half of them finished at 11-9, three more at 11-8, two at 11-7 and one only at 11-5 (won by Van Boening in his opening-round match against Garrahan).
Van Boening went on to defeat Chinakhov 11-9 to draw Thorpe, who’d defeated Claramunt 11-7 and Estiola 11-9. Jesus Atencio got into the semifinals with victories over Patsura 11-7 and Morra 11-9, advancing to pick up De Luna, who’d eliminated Sergio Rivas 11-9 and Tyrel Blowers 11-8.
Quick recap – Atencio vs. De Luna, 5 p.m. (EDT) on Griff’s TV (YouTube link above)
Van Boening vs. Thorpe, 7:30 p.m. (EDT) (same YouTube link)
Finals scheduled for 10 p.m. (EDT)
Go to discussion…
