World Cup of Pool set for thrilling start
WITH the 32 teams gathered in Rotterdam, Holland, the 2007 PartyPoker.net World Cup of Pool gets underway today - Tuesday 25th - at the high-tech Outland Nightclub.
With a total prize-fund of $250,000 at stake, there are three first round matches taking place from 15.00 local time and a further three games during the evening session.
All matches are winner breaks, race to eight and the opening game features current European No.1 Konstantin Stepanov, partnered by teenage wonder kid Ruslan Chinakhov, as the Russians take on the Croatian team of Ivica Putnik and Philip Stojanovic.
The Croatians will be looking to exorcise their nightmare in this event last year, when they missed two simple 9 balls as they went down to Vietnam.
The second game features China (Li He-wen and Fu Jian-bo) who are heavy favourites to take out the inexperienced South African pair of Clinton Rossouw and Jean de Beer.
The final match of the afternoon sees the Spanish pair of David Alcaide and Antonio Fazanes contest what looks like an evenly matched encounter with Japan’s Naoyuki Oi and the experienced Satoshi Kawabata.
Defending champions and hot bets for the tournament, Team Philippines, get their defence underway in the opening match of the evening session (20.00) with an interesting encounter against the improving Scottish duo of Pat Holtz and Michael Valentine.
Reyes and Bustamante are prohibitive favourites but according to Holtz, “we’ve got nothing to lose so we’re going to go out and enjoy ourselves.”
An all-European clash is the next game as France (Stephane Cohen and Vincent Facquet) go head to head with the Italian team of Fabio Petroni and Bruno Muratore.
Finally, there will be a lot of support for Holland A as they take on Indonesia in the concluding game of day one.
Niels Feijen, who is in a rich vein of form, partners Nick van den Berg but Indonesia is one of pool’s emerging nations and Ricky Yang has had a good season on the Asian Tour. He will be paired with Mohammad Zulfikri.
