ATHENS – All Greek top players, with Filippos Kasidokostas, Nikos Polychronopoulos, Kostas Papakonstantinou as most famous names, will start off in the main tournament in the Barrage club in Athens. They will face amongst others the Spaniard Jose Maria Mas and Turkish players Murat Tüzül, Birol Ulmaz and Mehmet Goren.
For the event in the Barrage club 112 players have signed up, after nine days of preliminaries the main tournament starts tomorrow. Nikos Chatzipavlis, a player himself, is the organizer in his club in Athens.
The Barrage Open is organized according to the UMB rules, the matches played to 30 points in the first qualification and 40 in the final rounds. The last 32 players meet in a knockout system on the four Verhoeven tables in the club.
Sixteen players are qualified in advance for the main tournament, sixteen players join them after the final qualification.
The seeded players are:
Filippos Kasidokostas, Nikos Polychronopoulos, Kostas Papakonstaninou, Kostas Kokkoris, Vaggelis Moulos, Dionisios Tsokantos, Apostolos Balogiannis, Elefentherios Kintatos, Nikos Chatzipavlis, Nikos Trémoulis (all Greeks), Jose Maria Mas (Spain) and Murat Tüzül, Can Capak, Adnan Yüksel, Birol Ulmaz and Mehmet Goren (Turkey).
The top three of the first qualifying rounds were:
Pre pre qualification:
1 Antonis Koukis, 2 Stathis Chatzipavlis, 3 Thanasis Kalliantas.
Pre qualification:
1 Kostas Giannakopoulos, 2 Dimitris Gevezos, 3 Tasos Ekoutsidis.
The prize money for top sixteen players is 6900 euros.