He and Torres go undefeated, split top prizes on MVP stop at Carom Cafe in Flushing, NY
Events in which Andy He (or Mario He) are competing are always a bit of a challenge for us here at AZBilliards because when a person’s last name is a pronoun, it tends to create ambiguities that can be difficult. Like the headline above, which, after reading it, begs the question “Who is he?” Abbott […]
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Andy He
Events in which Andy He (or Mario He) are competing are always a bit of a challenge for us here at AZBilliards because when a person’s last name is a pronoun, it tends to create ambiguities that can be difficult. Like the headline above, which, after reading it, begs the question “Who is he?” Abbott and Costello made “Who’s on First?” their most famous comedy routine because of just that kind of ambiguity. Launching into a report on this past weekend’s (May 31-June 2) Mhet Vergara Pro Am (MVP) Split Bracket tournament, which drew 80 entrants (High and Low Side bracket total) to the Carom Café in Flushing (Queens), NY, we’re bound to run into a few examples.
He, by the way, in this case, is Andy He, who went undefeated in the 45-entrant Low Bracket, while Daniel Torres did likewise in the 35-entrant High bracket. At the end of the day, stretching into three of them, actually, He and Torres opted out of competing in a final that would have yielded an official winner of the event and they split the top two prizes.
He (Andy) was among, but not the highest Fargo-rated competitor in the Low bracket. The range ran from a high of 560 (Erland Lami and Siddhant Patel) down to the 341 of Jeffrey Rosen. There were five Fargo rates in the bracket that were higher than Andy He and Harry Artinian’s 548. He (Andy) was battling hard, right from the start. In straight-up races to 7, his first two opponents (Boojie Oraa and Tamer Bajnouk) came within a game of double hill before He prevailed 7-5 and advanced. His next two did go double hill, first against Jasper David and then, in a winners’ side semifinal, Hector Ruiz, which advanced He to the hot seat match.
From the other end of the bracket, Armando Baquero was collecting ‘beads on the wire’ right from the start, using three (racing to 8) to defeat Browning Lui 5-2, two (racing to 7) to take down Walter Carillo 5-3, three again, in a race to 8, to get by Anastasi Toulios 5-5 and then, in a winners’ side semifinal, four (racing to 9) to get by Erland Lami 5-3 and join He in the hot seat match.
He (Andy) raced to 8 in the hot seat match that followed, with Baquero getting three ‘beads’ at the start. He (Andy) claimed the seat 8-2.
Lami and Ruiz came over to the loss side and ran right into their second straight loss. Ruiz picked up Demarco Tran, who, before it was all over, would play more matches than any other competitor in either bracket (11). He’d lost his opener and went on a nine-match, loss-side winning streak that just prior to meeting up with Ruiz, had eliminated Stefano Barahona 6-1 and shut out Akiko Taniyama. Lami drew Noel Estrada, who’d lost his opening match as well and went on his own six-match streak that would end in the quarterfinals.
Estrada downed Lami 6-4, while Tran and Ruiz battled to double hill, eventually advancing Tran to meet Estrada in those quarterfinals. Tran walked right into his second straight, double-hill match and eliminated Estrada to win that one as well. He made it three straight, double-hill wins with a 7-4 win over Baquero in the semifinals (Baquero racing to 5).
In a straight-up race to 7, Andy He downed Tran 7-2 to claim the Low Bracket title.
High Bracket’s FargoRates stretched from a high of 684 to a low of 566 (14 of them)
Daniel Torres wasn’t the highest FargoRated competitor in the High Bracket either, but there were only two higher than his 671; Chris Derewonski (684) and Max Watanabe (674), neither of whom he faced on his seven-match (six opponent) march to the High Bracket title. He was racing to 8 and 7, three times each (with an additional race to 8 in the final against an opponent he’d already faced in the hot seat match, Edgardo Agulay). In getting to the hot seat match, Torres never gave up more than three racks to any of his first five opponents, arriving with an aggregate game score of 37-9. He got by Luis Chirino (2), Leo Zhang (1), Duc Lam (1), Gary Bozigian (3), and in a winners’ side semifinal, Wilfredo Albay (2).
Agulay, in the meantime, raced to 7, four times and 6, once, to show up for the hot seat match with an aggregate game score of 34-19. Six of the 19 racks-against got chalked up against him in his opening round against Eddie Pacumio. He (Agulay) advanced and gave up only one to Ed Culhane, then four, three times in a row, to Ryan Ren, Charls Darwin Vergara, and in a winners’ side semifinal, Goerne Rara.
Agulay was awarded three ‘beads on the wire’ in a race to 8 against Torres. The two battled to double hill before Torres dropped the 9-ball to finish at 8-4 and claim the seat.
Rara came over to the loss side and ran into a petite dynamo, Ashley Benoit, who’s spent the past year or so battling the tour director of the J. Pechauer Northeast Women’s Tour, Briana Miller, for the yearly tour champion title. Miller won it last year (Benoit was second) and this year, three stops into the tour’s 2025 season, they’ve finished as winner and runner-up, all three times. Benoit won the opener outright and they’ve split the top two prizes at the the last two events. Now, she was in Queens, going head-to-head against all genders and still ‘in’ the running for the MVP event title. She’d lost her opener, double hill, to Gary Bozigian and went on a seven-match, loss-side run that included a shutout over George Gavin and a double-hill win over Max Watanabe, which put up her up against Rara.
Albay came over to the loss side and picked up Chris Derewonski, who’d lost his second-round match to Gavin and given up a total of just five racks to the four opponents he faced ahead of Albay. In his last two, Derewonski had given up just one to Vergara and none at all to Jonathan Martinez.
Albay used three ‘beads on the wire’ in a race to 7 against Derewonski and defeated him 4-3, advancing to the quarterfinals. Benoit, in the meantime, locked up in a double-hill fight to join him, her second in a row. She prevailed over Rara, only to have her streak stopped in those quarterfinals. She was awarding Albay a single ‘bead’ in a race to 6 and he just did pull it off, winning 5-4. He advanced and fell to Agulay in the semifinal 6-4.
Like the hot seat match, same opponents, same ‘beads’ (three to Agulay in a race to 8), same double-hill result. Torres claimed the High Bracket title 8-4 and entered into negotiations with Andy He for splitting the event’s top two prizes.
