Tri-State Tour / East Rutherford, NJ A total of 41 players gathered in Castle Billiards in E. Rutherford, NJ for the $500-added A-D Tri-State Tour event. Only one player could walk away with $630 for first, though, and it was Stu Warnock who was crowned king. Warnock was among the winners’ side final four, and he [...]

2009 PartyPoker.net World Pool Masters HOLLAND’S Nick Van Den Berg became the first player through to the semi-finals of the PartyPoker.net World Pool Masters as he held off the challenge of Johnny Archer to claim an 8-5 victory at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas. It was nip and tuck for the first ten racks before van [...]

2009 PartyPoker.net World Pool Masters Tony Drago, a winner of this event in Holland back in 2003, marched into the quarterfinals of the PartyPoker.net World Pool Masters following a comfortable 8-3 win over Dutchman Niels Feijen at the Riviera Hotel. The speedy Malteser came into the match slightly under the weather as he struggled a little with [...]

APA AWARDS $450,000 IN CASH AND PRIZES AT NATIONAL SINGLES CHAMPIONSHIPS World’s Largest Pool League Crowns Seven Amateur Champions in Las Vegas More than $450,000 in cash and prizes was awarded to American Poolplayers Association (APA) members at the APA National Singles Championships held April 29 – May 2 in Las Vegas at the Riviera Hotel & [...]

Defending champion Alex Pagulayan of the Philippines lost his title in the opening match of the 2009 PartyPoker.net World Pool Masters as he fell victim to the superior all-round play of reigning European Champion Nick Van Den Berg. It was a great performance from the Dutchman as his safety game was tight throughout and he made [...]

Broadband carried SureWest Communications to a 19 percent jump in first-quarter revenue, the Roseville-based company said Wednesday.

Revenue in the first three months of 2009 grew to $60.9 million, compared with $51.3 million in the first quarter of 2008.

Much of the gain came from the broadband sector. Revenue soared 46 percent to $39.2 million from $26.8 million on the strength of what officials called "significant" broadband business performance, including a full three months from its Kansas City operations.

SureWest acquired Kansas City-based Everest Communications in February 2008 for $173 million.

The gain from SureWest's $9.2 million sale of its wireless towers to Florida-based Global Tower Partners in February boosted the bottom line in the first quarter, increasing net income to $2.5 million from $283,000 posted in the year-previous quarter.

SureWest also saw broadband gains in the Sacramento area, with revenue up 12 percent from the year-previous quarter as more first-time homebuyers ventured back into the real estate market, chief executive officer Steve Oldham said.

The company's revenue from telecom declined 11 percent, but SureWest said it anticipated the downturn. First-quarter telecom revenue was $21.7 million, compared with the nearly $24.5 million posted in the first quarter of 2008.

Telecom has suffered across the country as more people abandon traditional landline phones.

"Telecom is still very important, but it's declining rapidly," said Oldham. He said SureWest is working to combat the decline by upgrading copper systems to fiber, stressing pricing and its Voice over Internet Protocol services.

Shares of SureWest rose 36 cents to $7.01 Wednesday on the Nasdaq market.

– Darrell Smith

WASHINGTON – In a high-tech shift accelerated by the recession, the number of U.S. households opting for cell phones only has for the first time surpassed those that just have traditional land lines.

It is the freshest evidence of the growing appeal of wireless phones.

Twenty percent of households had cells only during the last half of 2008, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey released Wednesday. That was an increase of nearly 3 percentage points over the first half of the year, the largest six-month increase since the government started gathering such data in 2003.

The 20 percent of homes with cell phones only compared with 17 percent with land lines but no cell phones.

"They're going the way of the disco," Stacy Frank, 25, said of land-line phones. Frank, who works at a Washington law firm, said she wouldn't even consider installing one.

"That's double the cost," she added. "Why would you have it? You can't take it with you."

Six in 10 households have both land lines and cell phones. Even so, industry analysts emphasized the public's growing love affair with the versatility of cell phones, which can perform functions such as receiving text messages and are also mobile.

"The end game is consumers are paying two bills for the same service," said John Fletcher, an analyst for the market research firm SNL Kagan, referring to cell and land-line phones. "Which are they going to choose? They'll choose the one they can take with them in their car."

Hard-wired customers are dropping the service at a rate of about 10 percent a year, according to Bill Kula, a spokesman for Verizon, the largest U.S. wireless provider.

Better call quality and battery life are making it easier to cut the cord, Kula said, but he doesn't expect land lines to disappear completely. People who keep their land-line phones say they do it for safety and reliability, Verizon found in a survey last year.

A caller's location is easier to fix when a 911 call is made from a land line. Also, land-line communication doesn't go out when the power does or a phone battery dies or a flood of callers swamps a cellular network.

Pollsters, for their part, are concerned about hard-to-reach cell phone users skewing their results. The Gallup Organization decided last year to begin calling cell phone numbers in order to get a more accurate cross-section of Americans in its surveys, spokesman Eric Nielsen said.

"The cell phone-only person is different from the general population," Nielsen said, and the CDC's survey bore him out.

Stephen Blumberg, senior scientist at the CDC and an author of the report, said that people who live in homes that have wireless service only tend to be disproportionately low-income, young, renters and Latino.

Martel out, Edey in MATCHROOM SPORT can announce that Canadian veteran Alain Martel has withdrawn from the 16 player starting line-up of the 2009 PartyPoker.net World Pool Masters, following difficulties in obtaining the necessary visa. He will be replaced by fellow Canadian 29 year-old Tyler Edey who will be playing in his second World Pool Masters. Edey is [...]

Sigel Takes Blaze Event Blaze 9-Ball Tour / Edison, NJ by InsidePOOL Staff Sandcastle Billiards in Edison, NJ, hosted the Blaze 9-Ball Tour May 2. A strong field came out to play, including players like Shaun Wilkie, Matt Krah, Eddie Abraham, Josh Brothers, and Mike Miller, but it was Hall of Fame member Mike “The Mouth” Sigel who [...]

Bowman Escapes Aiardo for the Win Pechauer All-American Tour / Davenport, IA by InsidePOOL Staff Bar table wizard Jesse Bowman took top honors at the May 2 stop of the Pechauer All-American Tour. Hosted by Miller Time Billiards in Davenport, IA, the $500-added event drew 23 players in a double-elimination 8-ball format on 7-foot bar boxes. Bowman was sterling [...]