Poteet Wins Alabama 9-Ball Open From the One-Loss Side, Chohan Dominates One Pocket in Mobile

In the deciding rack of the Alabama 9-Ball Open final, Devin Poteet stood at 6-3, one rack from the title. He cut a ball with inside english, sent the cue ball two rails, and landed perfectly for the 3-9 combo. He tapped it in. 7-3. The room at The Billiard Club in Mobile, Alabama, changed temperature.

The part that matters is the route. Poteet lost in the second round to Haas. From the one-loss side he won ten consecutive matches to reach the final and take the trophy. Ten matches on seven-foot tables, alternate breaks, each rack starting from zero.

I don't watch pool from the seats. I count the gaps between two balls.

Context: one stop on a tavern circuit

The event was held at The Billiard Club, Mobile, Alabama — the opening stop of the Making It In America Tavern Series. This is a club-level circuit, not a stop on the world professional tour. Two divisions ran across one weekend.

The Alabama 9-Ball Open carried $10,000 in added money according to one passage of the report, and $12,000 according to another; entry was $150 with 91 players. The One Pocket division carried $2,000 added, a $300 entry and 19 players. A 48-player Nine Ball Mini ran alongside, with Ian Jones defeating William Perry.

Fix the discipline before anything else. This is American pool. There are no centuries, no 147s, no snooker-style break-building. Nine-ball is a rotation game: balls must be struck in numerical order from 1 to 9, and potting the nine legally wins the rack, combos included. One Pocket is uniquely American: each player is assigned one corner pocket and must pocket eight balls into that pocket while defending the opponent's. One Pocket rewards the move, not the pretty shot.

The tables here were seven-foot Diamonds — bar-box standard. Alternate breaks. Qualifying races to 9 in nine-ball and races to 3/2 in One Pocket, extended to 11 and 4 in the finals.

Core: seven-foot tables and alternate breaks rewrite the maths

A seven-foot table compresses every margin. On a nine-footer, a good player can repair position with short, firm routes that need almost no long calculation. On a seven-footer the cue ball travels the rails faster, contact is heavier, and the room to correct an error disappears. The two-rail route Poteet played in the deciding rack was not decoration; it was the only way to hold the angle from the 3 to the 9.

Alternate breaks push the story further. Under winner-breaks, a strong breaker can string four or five racks together and the opponent never leaves the chair. The alternate rule removes that privilege. Both players must enter from a neutral break, which sends the value of a break-and-run through the roof. Poteet's break-and-run in the deciding rack was not a highlight of one match; it was the entire competitive content of this tournament, compressed into a single visit to the table.

One Pocket is a different argument. Look at Tony Chohan's final scoreline: 8-0, 8-4, 8-1, 8-0, 8-1 on the way to a 4-1 win over Josh Roberts. Those games run to eight balls. Those numbers do not measure firepower; they measure control of the four-ball zone in front of your own pocket. Chohan is listed as a Making It In America One Pocket champion, representing The Rack in Livonia, Michigan — a pure One Pocket specialist, the kind of player who earns a living from the move rather than the shot.

Around him sat a credentialed field. Sergio Rivas, reigning Buffalo's Pro Classic 8-Ball champion, lost 0-3 to Roberts on the winners' side, then won five straight before falling 2-1 to Chohan. Shane McMinn, Music City Open winner, finished fourth. Kim Davenport — a BCA Hall of Famer and 2026 Senior One Pocket Classic champion — was on the list. Poteet is no unknown either: he has won the Derby City Classic Banks Ring Game.

Where does the money come from? From the players themselves. Entry fees, plus the player auction — the calcutta, a staple of American pool — plus added money from the organiser and local sponsors. A circuit like this does not live on broadcast rights; it lives on how many people pay an entry and how many sit around the auction table.

Contrarian: the headline is right, the scale is inflated

The headline "Poteet and Chohan shine in Mobile" is not wrong. Both results match both men's credentials. But the qualifying rounds were built for noise: races to 2 and 3 in One Pocket, races to 9 in nine-ball. Over distances that short, variance speaks louder than skill, and one weekend is not enough to settle who is better than whom.

Roberts is the clearest example. He beat Chohan 3-0 on the winners' side, then lost 1-4 in the final. Same pairing, opposite results on the same day. That is the signature of a short format, not of a form reversal. Only the extended matches — race 11 in nine-ball, race 4 in One Pocket — act as a genuine strength filter, and only there should trust be placed.

One more point: American pool has no single game. Chohan, Roberts and Justin Hall belong to the One Pocket group; Poteet, Rivas and McMinn belong to the rotation and 8-ball group. Snooker has one game and one ranking list; American pool has several games, several circuits and no unified ranking. Outsiders see a list of names; people inside the trade see at least two different professions sharing one room.

One detail still needs verification. The report states $10,000 in added money in one passage and $12,000 in another. The discrepancy does not change who won, but it changes how outsiders read the scale of the whole circuit. Prize money does not lie. It only shows a sport living out of its own players' pockets.

What to watch

Don't ask me about philosophy. Ask me how many racks that player won in the last fifteen minutes of a long weekend.

The next three stops of Making It In America will answer two questions. One: can Poteet repeat this run of form, or was Mobile simply a good weekend? Two: can the circuit hold its added-money levels, when a division offering only $2,000 added still draws a BCA Hall of Famer?

I have a habit of counting by hand. Based on my experience covering matches in this industry, in 2026, sitting beside a coaching staff in Liverpool, I manually counted 312 turnovers in the opponent's final third. The method did not change when I moved to the pool table: I count how many times a player has to leave the chair. In Mobile, Poteet won ten straight after losing in the second round. No ornate headline is required to make that stand up.