World Championship 3-Cushion Donghae City: Favorites Survive the Group Stage

Donghae , November 10th 2022.

A sigh of relief from Blomdahl, some champion stress for Jaspers, and brilliant moments from youngsters Cho and D’Agata. The most prominent casualties in the two days of group play: D.A.C. Nguyen, Jun Tae Kim, Pedro Piedrabuena, Murat Naci Coklu. After two long days, the best 32 players in the world are ready for the K.O. stage. The level of play is high in Donghae City, as the averages show. We’ll make a quick tour of all the sixteen groups.

A)  Jaspers and Nguyen advance, Maréchal is out. The title holder impresses with a 40 in 11.

B)  Solid wins for Sánchez, never in danger. Aveiga joins him in the last 32, Piedrabuena is out.

C)   Seasoned soldiers Zanetti and Kostistansky survive their group, Abdin is third.

D)  Tran wins twice, Legazpi once, and no points for Abousaleh.

E)   Substitute player Park wins his group, ahead of Sidhom. J.P. de Bruijn comes up short.

F)   Horn edges out a win against Forthomme, but the Belgian qualifies anyway. Soares is out.

G)  Tasdemir and Seo into the last 32, B.J. Hwang doesn’t make it.

H)  Sensational finish here: Blomdahl needs to equalize with 5 to qualify, at the expense of Vera. Garcia wins the group.

I)     Solid wins for Sayginer, Novak wins second place. Aby Tayeh was third, but he played well.

J)    Dangerous flight, with Merckx and Nelin the qualifiers. Orak has 1.500 but he’s third.

K)   A scary day for Bury who was almost out. Nilsson wins, Karaca is third.

L)   Three Asian players, and strong ones. Koreans H.J. Kim and C.B. Lee make it, Umeda (Japan) is third.

M)   Painful result for last year’s runner-up: Coklu is third and out. Morales and Gonzalez advance.

N)  Myung Woo Cho qualifies with the best average of the field: 2.758. Heo second, Cha out.

O)  One great talent surprises another great talent: D’Agata beats J.T. Kim in 12 innings and joins Polychronopoulos.

P)   Vietnamese and relatively unknown Thai gets the better of S.W. Choi (second) and D.A.C. Nguyen, the finalist in Randers 2019.

All that results in tomorrow’s matches, starting at 13.00 local time:

M.W. Cho – Blomdahl

Jaspers – T.T.T. Nguyen

Zanetti – Aveiga

Nilsson – Gonzalez

S.Y. Park – Forthomme

Tasdemir – S.W. Choi

Polychronopoulos – J.H. Heo

Sánchez – Novak

H.J. Kim – Kostistansky

Garcia – Nelin

Merckx – C.H. Seo

Sayginer – Sidhom

Q.C. Tran – C.B. Lee

Horn – Bury

H.C. Thai – D’Agata

D. Morales – Legazpi.

All detailed results are available on the UMB website. https://www.umb-carom.org/PG344L2/Union-Mondiale-de-Billard.aspx

All matches can be watched on YouTube, via the Five & Six channel.

Donghae City, November 9th, 2022.

WC Donghae City: Tran and Zanetti lead the way. 

Sixteen groups of three, and the players all know what they have to do: don’t end up third. The first and second-place finishers will continue the tournament in the 32-player K.O. stage after the group matches are completed on Thursday.

The best ones out of the blocks were Quyet Chien Tran (40 in 13 against Ruben Legazpi) and Marco Zanetti (40 in 14, against Gerhard Kostistansky). Dani Sánchez started with a win in 19 innings over Luis Aveiga, Dion Nelin used 17 to beat Turgay Orak. Title holder Dick Jaspers had to work hard: he ran a 6 from 34-34 but his Vietnamese opponent T.T.T. Nguyen equalized with a 6! Veghel World Cup winner Torbjörn Blomdahl did not have the best start: he lost his opening match 36-40 in 26 to Jose Juan Garcia.

Roland Forthomme has played twice already: winning against Jose Miguel Soares and losing to Martin Horn. Tayfun Tasdemir opened with a win in 22 innings, in his group with two strong Koreans: Chang-Hoon Seo and Bong Joo Hwang.

Myung Woo Cho did well to beat his countryman Myeong Jong Cha in 16 innings. Nikos Polychronpoulos opened with a victory in 22 innings, over Alessio D’Agata. The battle between Vietnamese players Hong Chiem Thai and Duc Anh Chien Nguyen was won by the lesser-known of the two: 40-35 in 28. A similar upset was seen between Colombians Daniel Morales and Pedro Gonzalez: 40-29 in 24.

Su Yeong Park surprised group seed Sameh Sidhom 40-26 in 24, helped by a run of 15. Q.C. Tran did even better: his run of 16 is the highest of the tournament so far.

Sayginer, Merckx, Bury, and Coklu have not played yet. They will be at the tables twice on Thursday.

The play will start tomorrow at 10.00 local time. All matches can be followed on YouTube, via the Five & Six channel.

Lausanne, November 6th 2022

The Donghae City UMB World Championship is about to start.  

It’s the event of the year. In no single tournament can a player earn more prestige, or more ranking points. The UMB World Championship is the high point of any billiards career, and an especially tough one to win.

This will be the second time South Korea is host to the 3-cushion title event. The first one was eight years ago when Sung Won Choi won in Seoul. This time, the tournament is not in South Korea’s capitol but a few hundred kilometers east, in Donghae City. This will be the 

As usual, the tournament is based on invitation, with input from all four Confederations. This is the composition of the field:

1 title holder (Dick Jaspers)

16 ranked players

13 players from CEB

8 players from CPB

5 players from ACBC

3 players from AMECC

2 organization wildcards

The prize fund:

1: 20.000, 2: 12.000, 3:7.000, 5-8: 4.000, 9-16: 2.000, 17-32: 1.500, 33-48: 1.000.

The ranking points: 120 – 81 – 57 – 39 – 24 – 12 – 8. 

The format: groups of three, two players advance, matches to 40 with equalizing inning. K.O. stage: matches to 50, no e.i.   

The material: Hollywood tables, ClassOne TP-5 blue cloth, and Dynaspheres balls. 

As there is no opening ceremony in the current playing concept, the group matches will start on Wednesday 9^th at 10:00 AM (instead of 12:00) to finish the qualification rounds in two days.

Javier Teran’s participation has been canceled by the Ecuadorian Federation. He has been replaced by Su Yeong Park from the organizing Federation. 

Predicting the outcome of 3-cushion events is next to impossible, but of course, there are always favorites. A big name, former multiple winners could do it again; we mention Blomdahl, Jaspers, Sánchez, Merckx, and Zanetti. But we’ve seen single winners too, in the past: Kasidokostas, Umeda, Choi, Sayginer. As a country, the Koreans have the strongest delegation, Heo, C.B. Lee, H.J. Kim their best, and there’s a quality Vietnamese presence as well, headed by Q.C. Tran. But can one of them go all the way? Or will a CPB player rise to the occasion? The level of play is going up in Colombia. But that’s true also in Turkey. Tasdemir, Sidhom, Bury, Coklu, Horn? The list of dangerous “dark horses” goes on and on.   

Five & Six will stream the event on their YouTube channel. The UMB website will have daily updates.