Sias records first regional tour victory on the Q City 9-Ball Tour at Breaktime in Clemmons, NC
After recording cash finishes in Palisades Park (NJ), Las Vegas, and two events in North Carolina earlier this year, Joao Sias, from Rohnert Park, CA, broke through to claim his first regional tour win at a stop on the Q City 9-Ball Tour this past weekend (Sat., May 31). Having joined the AZBilliards’ database two […]
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Joao Sias
After recording cash finishes in Palisades Park (NJ), Las Vegas, and two events in North Carolina earlier this year, Joao Sias, from Rohnert Park, CA, broke through to claim his first regional tour win at a stop on the Q City 9-Ball Tour this past weekend (Sat., May 31). Having joined the AZBilliards’ database two years ago, finishing 17th in two separate Memorial tournaments in California (for Brendan Crockett and Chuck Markulis), Sias followed up with a single cash finish in 2024 at an On the Hill Productions’ event in Maryland.
Already in the midst of his best recorded earnings year of three recorded thus far, Sias added to his total by going undefeated to the hot seat, losing the first set of a true double-elimination final to Tim Nelson, who’d lost his third-round, winners’ side match and won five on the loss side to face and defeat him in that first set. Sias won the second set to claim the title. The $500-added event drew 31 entrants to Breaktime Billiards & Sports Grill in Clemmons, NC. In addition to demonstrating his skills at the table(s), Sias, if nothing else, proved himself to be a well-traveled member of the pool community.
Racing to 9 throughout, Sias gave up, in order, 2, 3, 4 and 5 ‘beads on the wire’ to his first four opponents, against whom he chalked up an aggregate score of 36-5. He started by giving up just two to Thomas Sansone, three to Rocky Hawkes, and four to Kenneth Tesseneer, to draw Don Harvan in one of the winners’ side semifinals.
The competitor he would end up facing in the hot seat match, Casey Cork, fresh off a runner-up finish in the Jersey Girl Billiards’ Natural Born Women’s tournament in Tennessee the week before, won her opening match, double hill, against Malek Haj-Hussein. She advanced to send Tim Nelson to the loss side 4-2 and drew Onyx Stinson in the other winners’ side semifinal.
Sias gave up his third, single rack in a row to Harvan and advanced to the hot seat match. Cork joined him after knocking Stinson into the loss side bracket 4-5 (Stinson racing to 7). Cork, racing to her 4, came within a game of double hill, but Sias prevailed 9-2 and claimed the hot seat.
Nelson, who’d followed his loss to Cork with a shutout versus Damon Kotke and, in a straight-up race to 6, Brandon McGuire 6-3, drew Harvan. Stinson picked up Jerry Hilton, who’d lost his second-round match to Nelson and won four straight, including, most recently, a double-hill win over Tesseneer and (with a single ‘bead on the wire’ in a race to 8) Hank Powell 7-3.
In a straight-up race to 7, Stinson ended Hilton’s streak 7-5 and advanced to the quarterfinals, where he was joined by Nelson, who’d prevailed, double hill, over Harvan. Nelson, operating with a single ‘bead on the wire’ against Stinson, shut him out. Giving up two ‘beads’ to Cork in the semifinal, he defeated her 6-1 for a shot, possibly two against Sias.
“Her best finish ever,” said Tour Director Herman Parker of Cork’s efforts at this event. “She’s 23 now and been playing on the tour since she was 14.”
The wait time for Sias, according to the digitalpool bracket’s time stamps, was just shy of two and half hours and it may have had something to do with the outcome of the opening set (maybe not, hard to know). Working with three ‘beads on the wire’ in a race to 9, Nelson used them all to prevail in that opening set 6-6.
Perhaps without knowing it, channeling The Beatles from 1964, Sias responded by ‘telling’ Nelson that “You Can’t Do That.” Same set up. Nelson working with three ‘beads on the wire’ in a race to 9. He could have used three more of them, as Sias claimed the event title with a 9-3 win in that second set.
TD Parker thanked Sundeep Makhani and his Breaktime Billiards staff for their hospitality, along with sponsors BarPoolTables.net, Break Time (Clemmons), TKO Custom Cues, Realty Group One Results, CHC Underground, Digitalpool.com, Dirty South Grind Apparel, Federal Savings Bank Mortgage Division and AZBilliards. The next stop on the Q City 9-Ball Tour, scheduled for this weekend (June 7-8) will be a $500-added event, hosted by Dot’s Cue Club in Rocky Mount, NC.
