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| We started out in the St. Louis/Metro East region with the Gateway Amateur 9-Ball Tour (GAT) in 2005. We had 6 host pool rooms with 12 tournaments during the season. The GAT concept was created by Michael Zimmerman to give the regular players a monthly event to compete in that was against similar accomplished players. We gained support from the billiard community and received several merchandise donations for sponsorship. Michael offered custom cue repairs at the events and monitored the merchandise. Danny Deiters was brought on board as the Tournament Director to handle the player registration and run the bracket at each event. After the first season, a few changes were made to the format to add more events to the schedule. We still had 12 Tour Stops with $300 added; however, the 2nd season also offered 12 Qualifiers. You have to be a GAT member to participate in the Tour Stops, but you don't have to be a member to participate in the Qualifiers. The entry fee into a Qualifier is half the price of the Tour Stops, 1 out of each 10 entries will earn a paid entry fee into the next Tour Stop. By adding an additional 12 events for a total of 24 to the season, it gave players more events to play in and a chance for the lower level players to get their Tour Stop entry paid for. After the first two seasons the number of players began to drop a little, so the GAT format was rewritten for the 2008 season. The GAT08 is now 8-ball instead of 9-ball, handicapped based on A, B+, B & C level players. Previous seasons money accumulated for an end of season championship tournament, but that too has changed. Now, money accumulates the same way, but the top 12-16 players in points after the last event will receive a bonus payout. This bonus payout is to reward those players that participate the most and are successful on tour. This bonus payout should encourage more participation from the average players on tour. With the success of the GAT, we are venturing out into additional regions to start similar tours. If you are interested in having a similar tour in your region, contact us for more information. Each tour on the Zim's Rack APT system offer 24-28 tournaments per year. There are 12 Tour Stops with $300 added and 12 Tour Qualifiers with $0 added, a possiblity of 4 Geographically Seperated Events (GSE). At the end of the year there will be a Final Tour Championship (FTC) that players will be able to qualify to participate in. Each Tour will add $3,000+ to the FTC. More info to come... |
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