Hotel Zuiderduin
Zeeweg 52 - 1931 VL
Egmond aan Zee
Netherlands
www.WorldPoolMasters.com
Friday 16th - Sunday 18th June 2006
Alex Pagulayan (Philippines) 8-4 Steve Davis (England)
Imran Majid (England) 8 – 3 Alex Lely (Holland)
Ralf Souquet (Germany) 8 – 7 Efren Reyes (Philippines)
The 2006 PartyCasino.com World Pool Masters continued on Saturday afternoon in Egmond with three further first round matches and it was England , Philippines and Germany who saw representatives advance to the quarter final stages.
With two more opening round games left to go, including the Ronnie O’Sullivan vs Wu Chia-ching, the event is finely poised.
Alex Pagulayan was the first player into the last eight as he completed a comprehensive 8-4 victory against veteran Steve Davis.
Pagulayan, who reached the semi-finals last year, will now meet Hungar ian Vilmos Foldes in the second quarter-final on Sunday afternoon.
Click "Read More..." for the details.
Despite winning, Pagulayan was not pleased with his performance. He said: “For me to win tomorrow I need to play better than I did today.
“I need to get the speed of the table and get lucky on the breaks. We both didn’t play that well but a win is a win.
“I have played Foldes twice before, I beat him in the first one and he then beat me.”
Despite Pagulayan’s deficiencies, Davis was way too rusty to pin his opponent down and by the time he found any sort of form, the match was as good as lost.
In the second match there was joy for Hounslow-based Imran Majid, as he ran out a good winner over home hope Alex Lely .
Majid played well throughout the game but it was early mistakes from the Dutchman that lead to his downfall and with the Englishman cueing well it was a deficit he never made up.
“I think I played pretty solid through out and I didn’t miss a ball, said Majid post-match.
“I’m feeling good and don’t think I could have played much better than that. Alex missed a couple of chances to run out off his break which was probably the difference in the end.”
In the final match of the afternoon, Germany ’s Ralf Souquet squeezed into the last eight with a thrilling 8-7 victory against Efren Reyes.
In the match of the tournament so far, Souquet appeared to be coasting at 6-2 ahead but Reyes won four successive racks before The Kaiser held his nerve to set up a quarter-final clash against Imran Majid.
A relieved Souquet said: “When you are up 6-2 and playing ok you are already thinking forward and running out on your own breaks. Unfortunately I missed two opportunities and he came back into the match to tie it up at six.
“At that point it’s a race to two. I still had the breaks in favour but I did the wrong thing and got out of position two or three times.
“I made it very difficult for myself and it turned out to be nightmare runouts but I managed to go the final nine and make it.”