FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
 
CSI Announces Charity Pro-Am                                     
 
CueSports International, Henderson, Nevada (April 24, 2017) – CSI is pleased to announce the 2017 CSI Charity Pro-Am, which will be on Friday, July 28 at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas during the BCAPL National Championships!
 
The Charity
Donate Life America is a nonprofit alliance of national organizations and state teams across the U.S. committed to increasing the number of donated organs, eyes, and tissue available for transplant to save and heal lives.
 
This is a charity that is near and dear to CSI because in January of 2015, our founder, Mark Griffin, had a double lung transplant. Without that generous donor, Mark Griffin may not be alive today. For more information about Donate Life America, visit www.donatelife.net.
 
 
How it Works
Eight (8) top professional players will participate in a one-day pro-am (professional-amateur) scotch doubles 8-ball tournament. Each pro will be paired with a BCAPL, USAPL, or CSI member.
 
A free raffle drawing will be conducted at approximately 8 p.m. Thursday, July 27 in the live stream arena and eight (8) lucky winners will be randomly drawn. Each winner may choose one of the eight participating professional players not already taken as his or her partner in the scotch doubles charity tournament.
 
 
How to Get Raffle Tickets
Raffle tickets can be received at the Donate Life America booth July 19-27 and can be earned by any or all of the following ways:

•          Receive one (1) free ticket for each BCAPL or USAPL event you enter
•          Receive one (1) free ticket for making a voluntary contribution to DLA
•          Receive three (3) free tickets for registering to become an organ donor

 
 
The Pros
Six of the eight professional players who have already agreed to participate include Shane Van Boening, Thorsten Hohmann, Justin Bergman, Rodney Morris, Skyler Woodward, and Oscar Dominguez.
 
 
How to Watch
The entire event will be streamed live and free by CSI! The exact live streaming details will be announced at
 
For more information, visit www.playcsipool.com/pro-am.
 
 
CSI is the parent company of the BCA Pool League (BCAPL), USA Pool League (USAPL) and also produces independent events such as the US Bar Table Championships, Jay Swanson Memorial, US Open One Pocket, US Open 8-Ball, US Open 10-Ball, and the CSI Invitationals. Visit www.playcsipool.com, www.playbca.com, or www.playusapool.com for more information.

​One of the things established Fargo Ratings provide is a prediction of a ‘fair” match between two players, one for which both players have about an equal chance to win.

Those who have spent time in poolrooms are no stranger to this issue. If the fair-matchup issue is discussed 30 times per week in 1500 pool rooms in just the USA, then this issue would have been discussed 23,400,000 times--that’s 23 million times...in the last decade. You’d think we’d be getting pretty good at it by now.

And yet, when FargoRate, with the help of big data and high-performance computing, came on the scene and started showing what fair matches really look like, many yelled ‘no way!”

So rather than continue to offend people’s sensibilities in darkness, allow us to shed some light.

Turning Stone Classic XXVII
Few tournaments fill as fast as Mike Zuglan’s Joss Northeast 9-Ball Tour pinnacle events at Turning Stone Casino. This one is going on right now with a full field that is a mix of top pros, regional champions, and a smattering of players from the northeast USA and eastern Canada. An amazing 92 of the 128 players have established Fargo Ratings--more than 70% of the field.

First Round Matchups
Of the 64 first-round matches, there are 33 for which both players have established ratings. We use these to address two questions:

1. How well does FargoRate predict the match winners?
2. Who, between the higher and lower-rated players in the matches would have won the FargoRate “fair” race-to-9 matches?

Results
The chart below shows the higher-rated player for each match first. The matches are ordered with the biggest rating gaps at the top. The first player--the player predicted to win by FargoRate--wins the match 27 out of the 33 times.

The second question is more interesting. The number in purple is the FargoRate “fair” match target for the lower-rated player. For instance Mr Hewett and Mr. Babravich are predicted to be playing a fair match if Mr. Hewett needs to go to 9 and Mr. Babravich needs to go to 2. The actual match score, on the right, is 9 to 2. The ‘2” is highlighed in yellow because Mr. Babravich got to 2 before Mr. Hewett got to 9.
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So how many of the 33 “fair” matches were won by the higher-rated player and how many were won by the lower-rated player?
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It is nearly a dead tie, 17 matches to 16.
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