3-Cushion
The preliminaries of the Agipi Masters after two days continue with a new round, new players and new chances. Haeng Jik Kim, Roland Forthomme, Jef Philipoom and Ryuuji Umeda have seeded yesterday for the next qualifying round, which will be played in January and February. Today, the two last groups of this weekend come to the tables.
The Koreans Jae Ho Cho, Dong Koong Kang, the Turk Tayfun Tasdemir and the Frenchman Jean Christophe Roux start the session and later today the Turk Cenet Lutfi, the Greek Nikos Polychronopoulos and the two young Frenchmen Cedric Melnytschenko and Pierre Soumagne play in the second session.
Haeng Jik Kim closed the first days with an impressive average: 1.857. He was the winner of the group with a general average of 1.626. It was much higher than in the group with Jef Philipoom as the winner. The four players in that group finished with an overall average of 1.125.
The group that will start this afternoon (14.00) with two Korean top players, Tasdemir and Roux is extremely strong. Jae Ho Cho, champion of his country and quickly moved up to twelfth place in the world, is the top favorite. He is 31 years old and participates for the first time in Agipi Masters.
Dong-Koong Kang is 31, is 20th in the world, also for him it is the first time in the Masters.
Tayfun Tasdemir, 35, is fourteenth on the ranking of the UMB and was 20th last year at the Masters.
Jean Christophe Roux is 42, playing in Europe for the successful team of Agipi and 351st on the ranking.
Lütfi Cenet and Nikos Polychronopoulos will face in this round two French players who want to gain experience in the Masters. Cenet is the player in a great form, he showed it with his place in the semi-final of the World Cup in Vienna and recent with a few wins in Grand Prix tournaments in Turkey.
Polychronopoulos was very busy due to his own business in Athens, but is more relaxed now and lately has some more time to play billiards.
Lütfi Cenet is 31, plays for the first time in Agipi Masters and is the thirteenth in the world.
Nikos Polychronopoulos is 33 and is 26th. The greatest success in his career was the second place in the World championship of 2006 in St. Wendel.
Cédric Melnytschenko is 23, was the junior champion of France in 2007.
Pierre Soumagne is 24, has a palmares with many national and international titles in the classic games and is 70th in the world.