2017 Smash TT Winter Challenge 2 Star Open

Class A Semi-Finalist and Winners from left to right Meshal Alduaig, Bo Wen Chen, Tiffany Ke and Lidney Castro 

A field of 32 players gathered at Smash TT on Saturday 12th March 2017 to compete in our Winter Challenge 2 star open, a giant round robin event. The standard of play ranged from a rating of 750 all the way up to 2600.

A preliminary 8 groups of 4 players were used to split players into two, 8 player A groups and two 8 player B groups. The top 2 players from each group advancing to semi-finals. In the B groups, the top 2 under 1000 also got an opportunity to continue their tournament, advancing to the C semi-finals.

In the initial group, one single upset was recorded with Joey Levene who has not played in over 1 year beating Varun Dontula by a margin of 3 to 1. Joey and Varun finished 3rd and 4rd to advance to the B groups.

In the first A group Bo Wen Chen (2592) dominated the group only dropping 1 game to Allen Shuran Lin (2287). A 3-way tie for 2nd place occurred when William Huang upset the form book beating out Allen Lin 3-2 in a fast-paced looping encounter. Tiffany Ke (2190) beat William to force the 3-way tie and joined Bo Wen Chen in the semis courtesy of a superior games difference between the tied players. The only other upset was Max Label (1547) beating hall of famer Barbara Kaminsky (1638).

No big surprises occurred at the business end of the second A group. There were many crowd pleasing exciting rallies however Lidney Castro (2492) and the very underrated Meshal Alduaig (2214) back after a six-year break from the game toped the group ahead of Smash TT club owner Michael Levene and his son Louis. Frank Cristofaro, Graham Copp and Mikhail Merkulov all recorded upset wins over higher rated players.

Down to the semi’s. Good entertaining table tennis and rallies however Bo Wen and Lidney were simply too strong for Meshal and Tiffany. In the final both players exhibited stunning back hand and forehand loops from distance with a large crowd cheering them both on. Bo Wen proved to be too fast and too consistent landing a higher percentage of his attacks to run out a 4-1 winner and take home the $300 check, a $50 gift card from Pongmobile.com the winner’s trophy and a pongmobile.com T-shirt! Lidney received $150, a trophy and a T-shirt too.

In the B final 9 year old youth overcame experience with simply more energy left in the tank after a long day’s play. Kay O’Hare a talented promising defensive player from Maryland, overcame a very tired Mahmoud Youssef by 3 sets to zero having lost in pool play to Mahmoud by the same margin.

In the C final youth did not overcome experience with Ken Kraft showing true grit and determination to overcome Jeremiah Jeffrey by a margin of 3 games to 1.

Full results of tournament

Final Match Video

https://www.facebook.com/MichaelJLevene/videos/10155158809269886/

Gallery from event

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1841030736149815.1073741837.1502096813376544&type=1&l=2d3c8f2860