3-Cushion
PORTO - The new start of the World Cup cycle, with the tournament at the Pavillon Dragon Calxa owned by the famous football club FC Porto, has been fully booked long before the close of the subscription. The return of the phenomenon Semih Sayginer is the most startling and Dani Sánchez is not in the top twelve of seeded players for the first time in his career as a top player.
The tournament will be played from 8 to September 14.
The third World Cup this year, after Istanbul won by Jae Ho ahead of Cho Sung-Won Choi and Luxor with Frédéric Caudron as the winner in the final against Torbjörn Blomdahl, not only welcomes the entire world top, but all players on the hunt for the top twelve positions.
The prize money for the top four is 5500, 3500, 2200 and 1300 euros.
The players in the top twelve, with four Koreans and two Belgians, are:
1 Frédéric Caudron (511 points)
2 Torbjörn Blomdahl, 374
3 Filippos Kasidokostas, 307
4 Eddy Merckx, 292
5 Dick Jaspers, 281
6 Marco Zanetti, 279
7 Sung-Won Choi, 255
8 Kyung-Roul Kim, 246
9 Jérémy Bury, 234
10 Jae Ho Cho, 231
11 Dong Koong Kang, 222
12 Tayfun Tasdemir, 222.
The Koreans, Turks and Portuguese are the best represented in the provisional list of 132 qualifying players. The total is 148 with twelve seeded players and four wildcards. The Japanese Ryuuji Umeda, former world champion, is the only player who received a wild card so far. The other three wildcards should be known before 11 August. It is expected that Semih Sayginer will be one of those players.
Dani Sánchez opens his hunt for the top twelve in the city where he plays with Torbjörn Blomdahl with FC Porto for the European Cup. The Spaniard missed two World Cups last year due to a surgery and has therefore dropped to the 13th position. In the Porto World Cup, the triple world champion should make up sixteen points to catch up with Tayfun Tasdemir or Dong Koong Kang.
The tournament will be played in the preliminaries with groups of three players to 30 caroms. In the final qualifying before the main tournament, the number of caroms is increased to forty.
Frédéric Caudron is the leader of the world ranking and also tops the World Cup ranking after two tournaments. The Belgian collected 106 points and is leading ahead of Jae Ho Cho (88), Sung-Won Choi (70), Choong Bok Lee (64) and Torbjörn Blomdahl (62).
On the qualifying list are all the well known players from the circuit, such as Nikos Polychronopoulos (third in Luxor), Choong Bok Lee (fourth in Luxor, fifth in Istanbul), Lütfi Cenet, Jung Han Heo, Roland Forthomme, Murat Naci Coklu, Eddy Leppens, Sameh Sidhom, Ruben Legazpi (second in Pelopennesos), Murat Tüzül, Ly The Vinh, Jean Paul de Bruijn, Quyet Chien Tran, Dinh Nai Ngo, Anh Vu Duong, Javier Palazón, Jef Philipoom and Savas Bulut.
Further on the list:
Xuan Cuong Ma, Quoc Nguyen Nguyen, Jae Guen Kim, Peter Ceulemans, Birol Uymaz, Glenn Hoffman, Jérôme Barbeillon, Riad Nady, Khaled Salem, Rui Costa, Hyung Bum Hwang, Kostas Papakonstantinou, Ahmet Alp, Jean Reverchon, Mehmet Goren, Sergio Jimenez, Jean-Christophe Roux, Therese Klompenhouwer, Pierre Soumagne, Raul Cuenca, Esteve Mata, Francis Forton, Jose Maria Mas, David Martinez, Juan Zapata, Antonio Montes, Johann Schirmbrand, Wesley de Jaeger.
Sixteen places are reserved for Portuguese players. On the reserve list are 27 players, including Javier Teran, Arnim Kahofer, Aveiga Luis Emilio Sciacca, Martin Spoormans and Carlos Crespo.