The Newport Centre
Venue
The Newport Centre
1 Kingsway
Newport
South Wales
UK
NP20 1UH
Tel: 01633 656757
www.worldcupofpool.com
Tuesday-Sunday 22-27 August 2006
Day 5 Results.
USA cruised into the semi-finals to finally end the resistance of brave Hong Kong in the PartyPoker.com World Cup of Pool.
Hong Kong , dismissed as 150/1 outsiders before the tournament, had defeated seeded teams Sweden and Russia in earlier rounds but were thrashed 9-3 by America , the competition’s number three seeds.
Earl Strickland and Rodney Morris will now face Vietnam in Sunday afternoon’s semi-final and will be confident of securing their spot in the first ever World Cup final.
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“We just stayed focused and didn’t lose track of our goal and stayed ahead," said Morris.
“It was very important to come out of the gate well to set the tone for the match and that’s what we did. If you get up but a couple of games in this format then you have a big advantage.
" Vietnam is the story of the tournament and they’re on a high with nothing to lose so they will come at us with full force.”
The Hong Kong pair of Lee Chenman and Kong Man-ho will be delighted with the $5,000 each they take home as losing quarter-finalists.
In the second quarter-final of the evening, No.1 seeds the Philippines overcame a huge scare to make their way to a quarter final match up v Germany .
Their opponents, the Czech Republic , lead 6-4 at one stage but took their foot off the pedal to allow Efren Reyes and Francisco Bustamante to claim the glory.
In the second game of the evening Team Philippines were made to fight all the way but did enough to become the final team to reach the semi-finals.
The No.1 seeds raced into an early 3-0 lead against unseeded Czech Republic but then only won one of the next seven racks as the Czechs gained a 6-4 advantage.
However, the Filipino duo of Efren Reyes and Francisco Bustamante showed their mental strength to win the next five to clinch the win at 9-6 and set up a semi-final clash against Germany .
“This was a scary match for us,” said Bustamante. “We got 3-0 ahead then they came back and they beat us four times in a row then it was 5-4 and 6-4. But it’s a race to nine and everybody can win. It’s very important that we played badly but still won - I broke four times and never had a shot.”
Reyes added: “Tomorrow we play Germany and they are good players and a very strong team so we need some luck.”
Semi Finals – Sunday Afternoon
USA v Vietnam
Philippines v Germany
33/1 outsiders Vietnam continued to upset the form book at the 2006 PartyPoker.com World Cup of Pool as they came from behind once again to oust favourites Italy and book a spot in Sunday’s semi-final line-up where they face either USA or Hong Kong.
The Hanoi-based pairing of Thanh Nam Nguyen and Chi Dung Long have catapaulted themselves into the big league of international pool with a string of brave performances and their easy-going antics have made them a hot with Welsh audiences too.
The pair were ecstatic following their win and with a guaranteed US$8,000 each – three times the national average wage - for reaching the semis, they had every reason to smile.
Following wins over Croatia , Holland and now Italy , the Vietnamese will be full of confidence for their semi-final match.
The Italian pairing of Fabio Petroni and Angelo Millauro were always in the match and did well to level things up at 7 all from 7-5 down and when they moved broke for the match at 8-7 they must have believed the win was theirs.
There was some tense safety play at the beginning of the 16th rack and both sides had opportunities to assert themselves but the risks always seemed to outweigh the rewards. It was the Viets who found the necessary opening to square things up.
The lag came into play once again for the Vietnamese as they broke off in their third consecutive hill-hill match.
A fantastic 7/1 combination under severe pressure from Nguyen gave them a great chance but a poor positional shot from Thanh piled more pressure on his partner.
He rose to the occasion though and made a tremendous table length shot to take out the 2 ball and from there the Vietnamese held their collective nerve to record another magnificent 9-8 victory.
Earlier Germany continued their march towards the PartyPoker.com World Cup of Pool final with a fine victory against fifth seeds Taiwan.
The German pairing of Thomas Engert and Oliver Ortmann secured a 9-4 success and will now meet either Philippines or the Czech Republic in the semi-final.
A delighted Engert said: “I felt more confident and more calm than I did yesterday when we played against Spain as we knew, on paper, that we are the better team. But today we knew that Taiwan have Yang, who is one of the best players in the world, and we had to play well.
“We got our chances and took them but also got lucky when we missed a shot and they were in a bad position. I think we put them under pressure to go 5-2 ahead and they missed shots so we knew we had a chance to win.
“When you play against a really good team it doesn’t matter how the game works as that’s your hardest match. In the first round (against Wales ) we only missed one shot and run out every game but it’s not always like that.”
| Winners: | US$60,000 x 1 |
| Runners Up: | US$30,000 x 1 |
| Semi-Finalists: | US$16,000 x 2 |
| Quarter-Finalists: | US$10,000 x 4 |
| Last 16: | US$5,000 x 8 |
| Last 32: | US$3,000 x 16 |
| Canada | Luc Salvas & Tyler Edey |
| Croatia | Philipp Stovanovic & Ivan Kralj |
| Czech Republic | Roman Hybler & Michal Gavenciak |
| England A | Raj Hundal & Ronnie O’Sullivan |
| England B | Steve Davis & Daryl Peach |
| Finland | Mika Immonen & Markus Juva |
| Germany | Thomas Engert & Oliver Ortmann |
| Holland | Nick van den Berg & Niels Feijen |
| Hong Kong | Lee Chenman and Kong Man-Ho |
| Hungary | Vilmos Foldes & Gabor Solymosi |
| India | Dharminder Lilly and Alok Kumar |
| Indonesia | Imran Ibrahim and Ricky Yang |
| Ireland | Tommy Donlon & Paddy McLaughlin |
| Italy | Fabio Petroni & Angelo Millauro |
| Japan | Masaki Tanaka and Satoshi Kawabata |
| Korea | Jeong Young-hwa and Lee Gun-jae |
| Malaysia | Patrick Ooi Fook Yuen and Ibrahim Amir |
| Malta | Tony Drago and Alex Borg |
| Philippines | Efren Reyes and Francisco Bustamante |
| Poland | Radoslaw Babica & Marius Roter |
| Qatar | Fahad Mohammadi and Bashar Hussain |
| Russia | Konstantin Stepanov & Konstantin Zolotilov |
| Scotland | Michael Valentine & Pat Holtz |
| Singapore | Chan Keng Kwang and Toh Lian Han |
| South Africa | David Anderson and Yulan Govender |
| Spain | David Alcaide & Rafael Guzman |
| Sweden | Marcus Chamat & Tom Storm |
| Taiwan | Wang Hung-hsiang and Yang Ching-shun |
| Thailand | Tepwin Arunnath and Amnuayporn Chotipong |
| USA | Earl Strickland and Rodney Morris |
| Vietnam | Thanh Nam Nguyen and Chi Dung Luong |
| Wales | Rob McKenna & Ben Davies |
THE LAST 32 | ||
Canada | 9 : 5 | Thailand |
Malaysia | 9 : 3 | Qatar |
Czech Republic | 9 : 6 | Poland |
Philippines | 9 : 0 | Malta |
Taiwan | 9 : 6 | India |
England "B" | 9 : 6 | Korea |
Russia | 9 : 3 | Hungary |
Hong Kong | 9 : 8 | Sweden |
Japan | 9 : 0 | Indonesia (Walkover) |
Spain | 9 : 8 | England "A" |
USA | 9 : 6 | Singapore |
Germany | 9 : 2 | Wales |
Finland | 9 : 5 | Ireland |
Italy | 9 : 2 | South Africa |
Vietnam | 9 : 8 | Croatia |
Holland | 9 : 5 | Scotland |
THE LAST 16 | ||
Philippines | 9 : 5 | Malaysia |
USA | 9 : 3 | England "B" |
Taiwan | 9 : 4 | Japan |
Hong Kong | 9 : 8 | Russia |
Czech Republic | 9 : 8 | Canada |
Italy | 9 : 2 | Finland |
Germany | 9 : 5 | Spain |
Vietnam | 9 : 8 | Holland |
THE QUARTER-FINALS | ||
Germany | 9 : 4 | Taiwan |
Vietnam | 9 : 8 | Italy |
USA | 9 : 3 | Hong Kong |
Philippines | 9 : 6 | Czech Republic |
THE SEMI-FINALS | ||
USA | - : - | Vietnam |
Philippines | - : - | Germany |
THE FINAL | ||
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