Down to Three at National Championship Series 8-Ball Championship

by InsidePOOL Staff

The field has been whittle down to its final three contestants at the first National Championship Series 8-Ball Championship, hosted by the Golden Nugget Casino in Las Vegas, NV. This event began February 13 with a total of 56 players fighting for the first-place prize of $2,700 and expenses to the World 8-Ball Championship event in April.

In the winners’ side matches Saturday evening, it came down to Walter Glass, Austin Murphy, Reggie Cutler, and Jui-Lung Chen sending their opponents to the one-loss side. Surviving that round on the west side were Max Eberle, John Doherty, Oscar Dominguez, and Brandon Shuff.

Murphy was unable to win the hot-seat match but is in the final three players left in the tournament.

In the following round, Murphy survived a hill-hill bout with Glass, while Chen destroyed Cutler 8-2. Meanwhile, on the left side of the chart, Mark Haddad ousted Eberle in a hill-hill match, Doherty eliminated Jason Bacon, Dominguez sent Sal Butera home, and Shuff survived Jose Alvarez.

Sunday saw the return of the final six remaining players. Both one-loss side matches were hill-hill battles, with Glass escaping Doherty 9-7 and Shuff ousting Cutler by the same score. In the hot seat match, Chen delivered the 15-year-old Murphy his first loss 8-4. Shuff soundly bested Glass 8-4 in the quarterfinals and now will face off against Murphy in the semifinals to see who will advance to meet Chen in the final match, a single race to 13.

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