In the upcoming four weeks, a Billiard festival will be celebrated and Tirana, Albania will be the capital of the celebrations. The venue is the Tirana Expo Center, Rruga „Gjergj Balshaj“. 24 tables are set up and waiting for the first players to arrive today. The venue is a large expo center hall and with an outside temperature of almost 40 degrees Celsius, the air condition of the building will have to work hard during the next weeks.
The festival starts with the Dynamic Billard Championships Youth. 104 athletes in the categories Under 17, Under 19 and Girls will open the games. They will compete in straight pool, 8-ball, 9-ball, 10-ball and team competition. Many medals and titles are at stake for the youngsters and it will be very interesting to see whether the established nations can gain most of them or whether surprises can be witnessed and unheralded kids claim their shots at the trophies. The Youth Championships starts tonight with the opening ceremony and ends with the 9-ball finals on August, 1st. Matches begin tomorrow at 09:00 local time.
After the Youth, the Euro-Tour comes to town with Europe’s elite players to play in the Dynamic Billard Albanian Open and in the Dynamic Billard Albanian Women Open. Around 150 players have announced for both events so far and play will start on August 5th (Open) and August 6th (Women) with both finals scheduled for August 7th. Both Euro-Tour events are played in 9-ball only and a prize fund of over 37.000,-€ in total is awarded to the players in the respective final ranks.
On August 8th, the Dynamic Billard European Championships Seniors & Ladies will commence. Another 97 players will set foot on Albanian ground and joust for titles, medals and glory. Again, straight pool, 8-ball, 9-ball, 10-ball and team competition is held and finals in 9-ball are scheduled for the last day which is August 16th, 2016.
Over 30 different nations will be represented in Tirana and it is definitely the largest event for the country so far. „Since this event is the first one in Albania, we are of course facing several challenges“, stated the President of the EPBF, Gre Leenders. „The Albanian Federation and all people involved are very kind and helpful and I am sure that we will make these events a huge success for pool for both, the EPBF and Albania“, added Leenders. „Of course it is a great endeavour to come to a „new“ country and have several events in a row, but once the tournaments are running we will be on track; I’m very sure about that“.
The Dynamic Billard European Championships Youth will begin tomorrow morning at 09:00 local time with first round matches in the straight pool discipline, Under 17 and Under 19 division.
The Championships will be played on 24 tables which will all be streamed LIVE throughout the whole event. In order to be able to follow all the action LIVE, premium membership can be purchased at www.kozoom.com. Once a premium membership is held, all events for the respective period of time can be viewed LIVE. Additionally, a huge video gallery is contained in the website.
The event will be hosted by the European Governing Body for Pool, the European Pocket Billiard Federation (EPBF) and organized by International Billiard Promotion (IBP). For further information and reference please go to the federation website www.epconline.eu, visit us on Facebook or check out our youtube channel for regular news clips or contact our press office press@epbf.com.