Results of Cassel’s 2016 Giant Round Robin Tournament

Posted by: admin | on April 23, 2016

Results of Smash Table Tennis Cassel’s 2016 Giant Round Robin tournament

Held on Saturday 4/23/2016

37 players competed in the 2016 Cassel’s Giant Round Robin Tournament held in Herndon, Virginia the home of the new Smash TT. The tournament consisted of a preliminary phase, group phase and single elimination for Open, Class B and Class C. 219 matches were played in total; an average of 12 matches per participant.

In the group phase there was only 1 significant upset which resulted in an Open and Class B player swapping places: Sameer Shaikh (1528) beat Vincent Adebayo (1613) in a closely fought encounter 12-14, 11-8, 11-9, 12-10. More on Sameer later, he was on fire!

2 open groups of 10 players were played on 6 tables. Group 1 was dominated by Bojun Zhangliang winning all his games, second was determined by a 3-way-tie between Madhu Diwakar (2005), William Waltrip (1922) and Kevin Zhou (1840) with William Waltrip advancing to the semi-finals on count back.

Allen Lin (2245) and Michael Levene (2216) advanced out of the second open group. Allen remained unscathed. Michael somewhat off form, was defeated by both Allen and his son Louis Levene (1868). Sameer Shaikh played exceptional table tennis, securing 4 victories against players with much higher ratings. He is likely to receive a big adjustment to his rating once the results are processed.

In the first semi-final Bojun was simply too quick for Michael and ran out an easy winner 3-0. Similarly Allen was able to power through William 3-0. Youth versus experience and on this occasion after playing a total of 11 previous matches youth won out with the old guard failing to put up any significant resistance. In the final Allen got off to a tremendously confident 3-0 lead, spinning the ball fiercely from both wings. Bojun responded with a combination of deadly servers and power attacks to level at 3-3. Starting strongly Bojun took 5 of the first 6 points which is where we pick up the action in the video below:

Roll of honor

Men’s semi-finalists from left to right Bojun Zhangliang, Allen Shuran Lin, Michael Levene and William Waltrip. $495 in prizes was paid to this group.