SEOUL - That was quite a fabulous round of play in the opening session of the last day of qualification at the World championships in Seoul. Torbjörn Blomdahl was the best, followed closely by Pedro Piedrabuena and Frédéric Caudron. And Dick Jaspers as the least! What did you say, the least? Yes..., with 2.500 average. Rarely seen anything like this in one round with four winners at the table. Four matches to 40 points, Blomdahl out in fourteen innings, Piedrabuena and Caudron in fifteen and Jaspers in sixteen. An overall average in four matches of 2.666!!
There was not a lot of tension in those four matches. Torbjörn Blomdahl defeated Xuan Cuong Ma 40-20 in 14 (2.857, run 8), Pedro Piedrabuena signed for the final judgment in the match with Kasidokostas (40-16 in 15, 2.666, run 12), Frédéric Caudron kept the Japanese Arai far behind (40-22 in 15, 2.666, run 12) and Dick Jaspers sent Luis Aveiga back to Ecuador with 40-17 in 16 (2.500, run 7).
Therese Klompenhouwer had already predicted, looking the matches at home: the billiards are fantastic, they run very fast and are very honest. I expect high averages, as in the World Cup of Guri, said the ladies world champion.
That prediction comes true so far. The world's top players show us an extreme high-level, except (how weird) the Koreans, who have showed not so many highlights on the starting days.
The surprises with one qualifying round to go:
1 Kyung-Roul Kim is out of the tournament after losing to Huberney Catano. The Colombian defeated his opponent in the final sprint 40-37 in 27. The Korean can focus his mind now on the billiard halls in which he's in charge. The lack of practice was the reason for the elimination.
2 Filipos Kasidokostas couldn't even take revenge for his first loss in the tournament against Tolgahan Kiraz. The Greek also lost without any chance to Pedro Piedrabuena and must fear now that his top twelve position is in jeopardy.
3 The elimination of another Korean high flyer, Dong Koong Kang, who won two years ago the World Cup in Guri, played a world-class match at the World championship in Antwerp last year (7 innings) where he was outplayed by Cenet. At the tournament in his own country, he did not survive in the group with Ruben Legazpi and Glenn Hoffman. The Spaniard was the group winner with two victories.
High level-matches were also showed by Tayfun Tasdemir, Dani Sánchez, Eddy Merckx and Sung-Won Choi in their last match in the group with two or more average.
Tayfun Tasdemir had a rocket-start against Sameh Sidhom: 21-4 in three after a run of eleven, 33-7 and a finish with 40-23 in 14. Eddy Merckx needed a good final sprint against Javier Teran, who was strong until the final innings, but was defeated 40-37 in 18 innings.
Dani Sánchez kept the German champion Christian Rudolph far behind: 16-8, 21-8, 25-11 and 40-16 to finish in 19 innings. Sung-Won Choi seemed to be in fire: he defeated Ramon Rodriguez: 40-29 in 20.
Torbjörn Blomdahl in full focus at the end of his match
Frédéric Caudron, ready for another shot at the title?
The last matches of the day:
Jérémy Bury-Jung Han Heo
Hyun Min Seo-Roland Forthomme
Jean Paul de Bruijn-Nikos Polychronopoulos
Quyet Tran Chien-Choong-Bok Lee.