GURI - In the Korean city of Guri, one hour away from the capital Seoul, the second Survival Masters tournament will be played from Thursday November 8th to Sunday the 11th. The tournament has been created by the UMB, World Federation, and Kozoom. Eddy Merckx won the first Masters tournament, which was called 3CC Masters. Dani Sánchez won the first Survival Masters in a format with four players at the same time at one billiard table. The Spanish four-time world champion, who has been dropped from the world's top fourteen, defends his title in the Survival. The run-up is a pre-round for two qualifiers from Monday, November 5 to Wednesday.
The 24 invited players are divided into six flights of four in the first qualification. The first two qualify for the quarterfinals. The other 12 players must come from the second chance between the numbers three and four from all groups. The winner will receive 50,000 dollar, the second 21,000, the third 18,000, the fourth 15,000, for the places 5-8 is 9,000 dollars reserved, 6,000 for the numbers 9-16, 4,000 for for the players finishing 17-24. That makes a total of 220,000 dollars.
The tournament is played on one Gabriels Rafale table. The four players meet in two match parts of 45 minutes each, in which all players start with 30 a point bonus. Each scored point is added to the player's score and deducted three times from the other players in the match. The order of players is determined by the computer, there is a 30 seconds shot clock and each player can use 3 time-outs per game. If a player loses his 30 points before the end of the stop, he can either apply for the points for the second period or wait for the start of the second period. At the end of 90 minutes, the order of the players is determined. In case of a tie, a UMB shootout is played.
The composition for Thursday's groups (10.00, 12.00, 14.00, 16.00, 18.00 and 20.00):
Group A: Jung-Han Heo - Semi Sayginer - Eddy Leppens - Nikos Polychronopoulos
Group B: Marco Zanetti - Quyet Chien Tran - Dinh Nai Ngo - Dong Koong Kang
Group C: Eddy Merckx - Quoc Nguyen Nguyen - Dani Sánchez - Tonny Carlsen
Group D: Haeng-Jik Kim - Sameh Sidhom - Tayfun Tasdemir - Chi-Yeon Cho
Group E: Dick Jaspers - Murat Naci Coklu - Jae-Ho Cho - qualifier
Group F: Frederic Caudron - Torbjorn Blomdahl - Sung-Won Choi - qualifier
The first two players (12) have qualified for the quarter finals, 12 others, finishing on three and four in each group, are offered a second chance. This second chance is played on Friday at 2 pm, 4 pm and 6 pm.
On Saturday, the quarter finals are held at 14.00, 16.00, 19.00 and 21.00. On Sunday, the semi-finals are scheduled at 16.00 and 19.00, the final is at 22.00. The time difference with Western Europe is 8 hours.