ANKARA - Two of the top favorites at the World championship did not make it through the first qualifiers. The champion himself, Burak Hashas, survived the first stage easily. Sixteen players are left in Ankara for the knock-outs, which will lead to the final stage tomorrow, Saturday. Who would have thought that Dimitrios Seleventas and Denizcan Akkoca would not even get through the qualifiers? The titleholder's main competitors after one day? Ye Sung Jeong, Myeong Gyu Oh, Alptekin Canozkan, Valentino Oliveto and Amir Ibraimov.
Burak Hashas was the best of the first-round 32 players with four match points and 1.470 one average. Even better was Valentino Oliveto from Argentina, who started with a loss against Lukas Mortensen (25-20 in 15), but recovered in the best match with 25 in 12 and finished with 2 match points and 1.666.
Closest in average were Koreans Ye Sung Jeong and Myeong Gyu Oh both with 1.351. But when the qualifications were completed, the elimination of Seleventas (runner-up at last year's Worlds) and Akkoca (former double European champion) were the most striking things about these preliminary rounds, as they were both on two losses after two matches. And also very surprising was that Nikolaus Kogelbauer flew out of the tournament with two losses, one of which was against Joris van 't Zelfden.
Who were the best group winners?
- Burak Hashas with 4-1,470-8
- Ye Sung Jeong with 4-1,351-7
- Myeong Gyu Oh with 4-1,351-6
- Amir Ibraimov with 4-1.086-6
- Nathan Duriez with 4-1,086-5
- Goncalo Santos with 4-1,021-7
- Daniel Sainz Pardo with 4-0.862-5
- Valentino Oliveto with 2-1,666-8
That led to the first knock-out round with the best 16:
Burak Hashas (Turkey)-Hakan Gorguc (Turkey)
Valentino Oliveto (Argentina)-Mohamed Khaled (Egypt)
Nathan Duriez (France)-Lukas Mortensen (Denmark)
Amir Ibraimov (Germany)-Ubaldo Sanchez (Mexico)
Myeong Gyu Oh (Korea)-Mathias Moscoso (Peru)
Joris van 't Zelfden (Netherlands)-Goncalo Santos (Portugal)
Daniel Sainz Pardo (Spain)- Alptekin Canozkan (Turkey)
Ye Sung Jeong (Korea)-Marcos Morales (Spain).
Egyptian player Mohamed Khaled made a surprising start
Lukas Mortensen from Denmark
Joris van 't Zelfden from the Netherlands