TILBURG – The organizations of events, audience and players have witnessed the introduction of a unique system in billiards. Kozoom and Biljartpoint have found themselves in a collaboration called Kozoom Competition.
The sportsdirector of a tournament imports the results of the matches and the Kozoom system directly generates all the rankings, statistics and the information that they want.
Kozoom Competition is linked to the Kozoom scoreboards. The CEB tournament in Ronchin, that was played last weekend, was a first test of the system. Very new and interesting was the speed average of the players, registered on the scoreboards.
Frédéric Caudron was the fastest player of the field: the Belgian, who won the tournament, scored in one match 338 caroms per hour.
The functioning of Kozoom Competition is as follows: on Friday at 17.00 was the start of the first round. The matches were already registered in Kozoom Competition. The Sports director or someone else from the organization, pressed the button 'send to scoreboard’ and the match was transported to the table on the scoreboard.
After the match, with a click on 'download results' the result was sent directly to Kozoom Competition. The rankings were updated, often within one minute after the match.
Geoffrey Molenschot from Tilburg is the driving force behind the system. He says about the project that he launched: ,,Seven years ago I started a website, Biljartpoint, with Peter Rijckaert. The goal was to provide information for the KNBB in Middle Brabant. We made a software program, where the district could find everything: the number of members, subscriptions, the results entry, averages, reductions everything. All meant to register a billiards competition.''
And in a later stadium:
,,After a few months, another billiards federation (Dongen) came to us, because they had seen the KNBB-MB website. In the next years our software rippled like wildfire over the Netherlands. We currently have 55 big organizations, 47.000 players and 1.300 clubs who use our system. Monthly 200.000 visitors watch the results, they visit us a few million times per month.’’
Geoffrey Molenschot and his organization have gained much experience in recording events in billiards. The software is able to register all regulations very flexible.
,,Every organization works on its own way, but the power of our software is that we can offer it for all kinds of organizations.''
About the cooperation with Kozoom, Geoffrey says: ,,During the World championship in Sluiskil, Biljartpoint has worked together with Kozoom. We also talked about cooperation in recent years. In March of this year, 2013, this cooperation was a fact: Kozoom Competition was founded.''
Geoffrey: ,,Kozoom is of course the best billiards platform in the world. The organization is a specialist in broadcasting billiard matches on the internet. Live and via replay. But Kozoom Mag produces the moment of the match. Kozoom Competition is created for before and behind the event.’’
,,We can offer accounts to organizers of big and small events. They can initiate an event, they can make the registrations for the event process, manage members, schedules, make the group formats and thus prepare the whole event.''
The CEB sports director, Jean Pierre Guiraud, had contact with Kozoom before the Grand Prix in Ronchin and Arnaud Carrer from Kozoom has made an extension on the scoreboard. The scoreboard now registers how long a player is at the table and the average of scoring the caroms.’’
The organization can intervene when the speed is too low. Geoffrey: ,,In Ronchin, they started with 200 caroms per hour as a limit. After the group stage, they have lowered it to 150 per hour. The deal was that when the speed was below the limit, the referee would use the timer of 15 seconds. They were able to handle that via the scoreboard, but unfortunately, the rule was not used often.’’
An organization can ask for an account to use the Kozoom Competition and can arrange it themselves. Geoffrey: ,,In preparation of a tournament, during and after the tournament, results can be seen as in the Grand Prix of Ronchin.’’
,,In the future, people can create an account. We have it in preparation, so if they want an account, they can send an email to competition@kozoomcorp.com.