Miller lucky and good at Super Bowl Pool Tournament

By John Burbridge

sports@charlescitypress.com

CHARLES CITY — When asked how he won the 8-Ball event during the three-day Super Bowl Pool Tournament held Feb. 5-7 at Hot Shot Billiards, Ryan Miller said, “I got lucky.”

Many of Miller’s fellow pool players concurred with his self assessment.

But as he proved during the subsequent Doubles event that concluded the tournament a good five hours after the Super Bowl concluded, Miller may be lucky but he’s also good.

While playing with doubles partner Joe Hull, Miller performed repeated table runs — but not at the same speed.

During one of his semifinal runs, Miller of Charles City sunk straight-in shot after shot in rapid order like he was on a time clock.

Then during another run, in the final against Al Damjanovic and Rick Brinkley, both from Waterloo, Miller circled the table numerously, studying the pattern of balls as if it was a puzzle to solve.

His run nearly took 10 minutes. Of course, his partner had to quip that he would have done it differently and mentioned that Miller “was lucky” that he didn’t scratch on one of the shots.

“Sometimes you’ve got to take that chance,” Miller said.

In the end, Miller and Hull won five games to one.

“This is the second year we hosted this,” said Hull, owner of Hot Shots. “It’s been going on much longer than that. It used to be held in bigger areas and convention halls. It’s a lot more cozy in here.”

The Super Bowl Tournament also consisted of a 9-Ball event on the Saturday of the weekend. Chuck Becker made the two-hour drive from Ames to claim that title.

“I’m not much of a 9-Ball player … this is the first 9-Ball tournament that I won,” Becker said. “I prefer 8-Ball, but I’ll take this.”