Friday, March 25, 2011: Today's matches bring the feeling of all or nothing to the arena. The tournament starts with two rounds in the loser's bracket where the defeated players will drop out of the straight pool championship.
One very dramatic matchup happened between Stephane Cohen from France and Germany's Manuel Ederer. Both players are well known to be good straight pool players, both players have lost one match so far ... and both players want to make it to the final 32. They represent different generations of European Pool-Billiard. Cohen turns 40 years of age this year while Ederer becomes 18 in May. The match could be called “experience v youth”. And so it starts. Cohen takes an amazingly high lead and everything looks in his favour. When the score was 113 to 39 in favour of the French, no one really believes in Ederer to come back anymore. But he does. Cohen allows him to take the table. He takes all the confidence he has and pockets ball after ball, rack after rack. He makes no more mistakes and stands the heat of table 22 in the final arena. He runs 86 balls and eliminates Cohen out of the straight pool event, securing himself a spot in the best 32 player's single elimination.
The single elimination matches were drawn after the conclusion of the loser's bracket.
These matches begin at 13:00 pm local time:
David Alcaide (SPA) v Kasper Kristoffersen (DEN)
Jo Graff (LUX) v Petri Makkonen (FIN)
Oliver Ortmann (GER) v Francisco Sanchez Ruiz (SPA)
Zoran Svilar (SRB) v Kim Laaksonen (FIN)
Onur Yiildirim (TUR) v Manuel Ederer (GER)
Jim Chawki (SWE) v Valteri Virtanen (FIN)
Tomasz Kaplan (POL) v Ruslan Chinahov (RUS)
Albin Ouschan (AUT) v Huidji See (NED)
Nick van den Berg (NED) v Sascha Tege (GER)
Laszlo Agics (HUN) v Niels Feijen (NED)
Sandor Tot (SRB) v David Zalman (CZE)
Aki Heiskanen (FIN) v Fabio Petroni (ITA)
Serge Das (BEL) v Juergen Jenisy (AUT)
Roman Pruchay (RUS) v Ralf Souquet (GER)
Andreas Gerwen (SWE) v Marko Lisnic (CRO)
Tomas Larsson (SWE) v Artem Koshovyi (UKR)
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 event website www.epconline.eu or contact our press office.
