22 men’s teams and 13 women’s teams have announced for this year’s Dynamic Billard European Championships team competition. Today, action has started in both divisions at 09:00 CET.
The teams in the men’s division consist of three players who play 8-ball, 9-ball and 10-ball. As soon as one team has won two matches, the team match is over. Defending Champions are team Poland. They have solved their first task today pretty unspectacular. They defeated team Greece 2:0 with Tomasz Kaplan winning the 8-ball match 8:1 over Theodore Bitsaxakis and Mariusz Skoneczny overpowering Manolis Papadodimitrakis in 9-ball 9:6. The Polish team will face team Sweden in the next round tomorrow at 09:00 CET. The Swedes have defeated team Norway with 2:1. Jim Chawki was successful in 8-ball over Steffen Wolff with 8:4. „Napoleon“ Marcus Chamat put another point into the Swedish account with his 9-ball victory 9:7 over Kristoffer Mindreboe. The only Norwegian point was taken by Mats Schjetne in 8-ball who defeated Andreas Gerwen 8:5. One of the favored teams here is team Spain. They crushed team Austria with 2:0 and will now meet their neighbors from Portugal in the next round. Close action could be witnessed in the match between teams Russia and The Netherlands. Russian Chinakhov took the first point for the Russians in winning the 10-ball 8:3 over Marco Teutscher. Niels „The Terminator“ Feijen was able to equalize that by defeating Maksim Dudanets in 8-ball 8:4. The decision had to come from the 9-ball match. Nick van den Berg was up 7:3 in a race to 9. But his opponent Konstantin Stepanov never gave in and pulled back rack after rack from van den Berg. it came to a hill-hill situation at 8:8. There, Stepanov demonstrated high class pool as well as nerves of steel. He ran a tough rack and took the match 9:8 from van den Berg. With that point, Russia defeated The Netherlands with 2:1. The Dutch will meet Croatia in the next round who won 2:1 over team Slovakia. The fourth winner’s qualification match will be played between team Germany (2:0 over Slovenia) and team France (2:1 over Finland).
In the women’s division, the teams consist of two players who play 8-ball and 9-ball. In case of a 1:1 tie, a shootout is played. The cue ball will be put on the head spot and the object ball on the foot spot. The teams have to shoot at this shot and whoever wins that shootout wins the match. The reigning Champions are team Russia. They had a walk-over in the first round and then smashed team Italy 2:0 to get to the winner’s qualification round. There they will meet team Belgium consisting of the Khodjaeva sisters. They won both of their matches through the shootout. 2:1 over Sweden and the 2:1 over Poland. The other winner’s qualification match will be played between team Austria (2:0 over team Germany) and team Norway (2:0 over team Spain). The winner’s qualification round in the women team’s division is tomorrow at 11:00 CET.
Today will feature more team action until 18:00. Then, the semifinals in 10-ball will be played with the finals to be scheduled for 20:00.
The Championships are 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.