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Action-Packed With UMB / Five&Six International Tournament in Korea

It is going to be an action-packed month of July for the 3-Cushion top international players.

Five&Six International has three events lined up in Korea from July 1st to July 18th.

The main tournament, World 3-Cushion Grand Prix, sanctioned as an International Invitation Tournament by UMB, will be broadcasted live on the following channels:

  • Billiards TV
  • MBC Main Channel (Select Matches)
  • MBC NET
  • KBSN SPORTS
  • NAVER
  • Kakao TV
  • Afreeca TV
  • Five&Six YouTube Channel and more

We invite our fans to watch this exciting tournament from the comfort of their homes, through our partner channels. Billiards TV is the number 1 channel for Billiards Sports in Korea, while KBSN is one of the leading sports channels in the country. Fans should also note that usually all UMB events are broadcasted on MBC Sports+ Channel, but for the first time, some matches from this tournament will be broadcasted on the prominent MBC Main Channel.

After a long pause in our international calendar due to COVID-19 restrictions, this is Five&Six first major event. UMB is confident that vaccination around the world will open the possibilities of returning to normalcy, continuing with the organization of events on the UMB international calendar.

Special thanks to Five&Six International and all involved players. The players have fulfilled the mandatory quarantine of 14 days after their arrival in Korea. An enormous effort, and a demonstration of their commitment to the fans around the world to promote the sport and offer the best of themselves to continue enhancing 3-Cushion Billiards.

Event details:
From Thursday, July 1st, to 4th, two preliminary events are planned.
First a shoot-out tournament from July 1st to 3rd with the 32 invited players, and then a Pro-am tournament on July 4th, with 15 selected players.
The main tournament, World 3-Cushion Grand Prix, will be played from July 5th to 18th.
All tournaments will take place at the Hotel Inter Burgo Wonju, in Gangwon-Do, Korea.

In the main tournament, 4 groups of 8 players will go head-to-head in a full competition. Hence, each player will face 7 other players from his group in the first round in a ‘best of three’ format. The playing time is 25 minutes per set, and the player with the most points is winner of the set. The best 4 players, from each group of 8, advance to the next round, resulting in a repartition in 2 groups of 8, for a total of 16 players. The last and the final round will be with 8 players: the 4 best players from the 2 groups of the second round.

This means that the 8 finalists will play a total of 21 matches to determine the winner of the tournament. The total prize money for the main tournament is 300,000 US Dollars.

Most of the world’s top 3-Cushion players will travel to the three tournaments. The 32 players compete in 2 tournaments and the selected 15 players are invited to the Pro-am tournament.

Three Korean players from the top rankings have been invited (Haeng-jik Kim, Sung-won Choi, and Jung-han Heo). In the past weeks, the preliminary rounds were played in Korea to select the other Korean participants, supplemented by three wildcards from the home country.

The players for the main tournament are:

  • Dick Jaspers (Netherlands)
  • Torbjörn Blomdahl (Sweden)
  • Eddy Merckx (Belgium)
  • Tayfun Tasdemir (Turkey)
  • Dani Sánchez (Spain)
  • Quyet Chien Tran (Vietnam)
  • Haeng-jik Kim (Korea)
  • Sameh Sidhom (Egypt)
  • Semih Sayginer (Turkey)
  • Murat Naci Coklu (Turkey)
  • Duc Anh Chien Nguyen (Vietnam)
  • Lütfi Cenet (Turkey)
  • Sung-won Choi (Korea)
  • Jung-Han Heo (Korea)
  • Roland Forthomme (Belgium)
  • Quoc Nguyen Nguyen (Vietnam)
  • Dion Nelin (Denmark)
  • Nikos Polychronopoulos (Greece)
  • Therese Klompenhouwer (Netherlands)
  • Gülşen Degener (Turkey)
  • Antonio Montes (Spain)

The Koreans who have been added after the pre-round matches are:

  • Dong-hoon Kim
  • Chang-hoon Seo
  • Jo-ji-yeon
  • Bong-ju Hwang
  • Choong-bok Lee
  • Wan-young Choi

And two ladies:

  • Jin-ah Kim
  • Ji-eun Han

The wildcards for Korea are:

  • Ji-hoon Ahn
  • Jun-tae Kim
  • Myeong-jong Cha

UMB.