Rhode Island pool players have been racking up some big wins lately, from a seniors championship at Mohegan Sun to a second-place showing last month at the World Pool Championships in Las Vegas.

Four men and one woman won $5,000 after placing second in the American Poolplayers Association (APA) Team Captains Championship. Assembled at the last minute, the team members hadn’t even met before arriving at the Westgate Resort & Casino.

“In order to be on a Captains team, you have to have been a team Captain for two sessions in the last year,” explains Shira Simon. “You can build your own team but with a very limited number of people to choose from.”

Simon and business partner Justin Wales are league operators. They run the Rhode Island Chapter of the APA. The national APA decides how many teams get sent to Las Vegas, and Rhode Island got two. One team won a qualifier.

“For the other slot, I wanted to build a team from my captains who were already out there,” says Simon. “I had six teams in mind, I said let’s build a captain’s team from those six teams. It didn’t work out in the end because of timing, so I found three of those captains and they called in Jason and Kristin Frost and everyone flew out to Las Vegas.”

“The other guys are Bobby Vazquez, Evan Damian and Phil Riggi, Jr. Evan and Phil knew each other but they didn’t know Bobby. We formed the whole team just by texting. They all met in the pool.”

“They’re all great people,” says Justin Wales. “The captain, Bobby Vazquez, has been playing for well over twenty years.” The team was named Bobby V’s.

Teams rotate players of different skill levels and alternate between playing 8-ball and 9-ball. (Simon explains that 8-ball is the most familiar version of the game. It’s played with 15 balls and the winner needs to sink eight of them to win, which is where the name comes from. With 9-ball, only nine balls are on the table, and they need to be hit in numerical order.)

“It’s a super-fast, very cool format,” says Simon, adding that racks (rounds, basically) only last a few minutes each.

Though the team lost their first match, they recovered quickly. “We lost our first match of the tournament and unfortunately we lost the last match of the tournament,” says Jason Frost of Coventry. “I couldn’t have asked for a better group of people to have shared the experience with. We shared so many laughs throughout the days and it’s a memory I’ll never forget.”

ETX Elite, a team from Tyler, Texas, ultimately won the $10,000 prize.

Aside from the captains, the Rhode Island APA chapter sent six eight-person teams to Las Vegas, out of about 1,500 who compete in local league play.

The American Poolplayers Association is the largest amateur pool league in the world, says Simon. There are chapters in 49 states — all but North Dakota — as well as in Canada and even far-off places like Japan and Singapore, with a total membership of about 250,000 people.

Back on the east coast, an interleague APA tournament took place at Mohegan Sun in July, and Rhode Islanders won big there, too.

“We had a senior doubles team,” says Simon. “It was the first time they tried this. You had to be at least 55 to play. We had a local qualifier and this guy Russ Micheli from Cranston, who is 63, won with this other guy Frank who was 90. Doubles events happen every two hours, and Frank realized he wouldn’t be able to play the tournament all day without a break, so Russ got this other guy George Berube to play at the last minute, and they ended up winning the whole tournament. Then they both wanted to be back home to play league that night, so they almost didn’t stay to get the trophy.” They also won $1,400.

At the same tournament, a Rhode Island Masters team won, beating 47 other teams for first place and a $3,000 prize. Captain Ryan Lineham of West Warwick, his son Evan Moreau of Hope Valley, Kerry McAuliffe of Lawrence, Mass. and Leann D’Ettore of Narragansett beat a Connecticut-based team in the finals.

As franchise owners, Simon and Wales handle administrative duties, which means setting matches set up at dozens of locations across the state, from small bars with only one or two pool tables to larger halls like Snookers in Providence or The Joint in Cranston. The places with small tables host travel leagues on slower nights of the week.

“My teams travel from place to place,” Simon says. “Delaware and Hawaii are the only other states with one statewide league. For instance, there are at least five (leagues) in Massachusetts.”

Players are given handicaps, so newcomers and younger players have a shot against more seasoned players. “We’re about having the most fun, and making memories out of these events and experiences,” says Simon.

“It’s based on how many times you approach the table,” Simon says. “Someone who gets all their balls in at once approaches the table a lot less often than someone who misses a lot and has to keep trying. The system’s way more complicated than that, but that’s the most barebones way to explain it.”

“You can’t just stack teams with great players,” Wales says. “You need different skill levels.”

“Anyone can play and anyone can win,” he adds. “Playing pool is secondary to relationship building. Pool is a great unifier of people and that’s really what we’re all about.” He says he knows several married couples who first met playing pool in the APA league together.

The fall league is going now, and there’s still time for late-forming teams to enter. The next session starts in early January. More info, visit apa401.com.