Preliminaries with another system

ANTALYA - Between two rounds of the Agipi Masters from 13 to 19 February the World Cup cycle will be opened in Antalya. Regarding the inscriptions the tournament is fully booked with two hundred players.

The system is different than in previous years: the final qualifying for the main tournament will be played with twelve groups of which one player is seeded. Those twelve players will supplement the groups with two players from the previous qualification.

The new year for billiard has begun as it ended: Dick Jaspers is the number one of the world and is not being threatened for the time being. The world champion and champion of Europe has extended his Dutch title and retain the twenty points.

Those points are important, of course, as is also shown on the ranking list: eight players in the top twelve are champions of their country as well (Jaspers, Blomdahl, Bury, Merckx, Kasidokostas, Horn, Zanetti and Choi), only four couldn't grab the title: Caudron, Sánchez, Kim and Cho.

he World Cup of Antalya opens a cycle of three tournaments: Antalya, Hurghada and Suwon. There's a good chance that Porto (or Matosinhos), will organize a fourth, adding itself to the list of World Cup organizations.

In Antalya, the last two wild cards have been given to the Colombians Robinson and Julian Morales, who also received a ticket in Vienna for participation. Furthermore, Chung Bok-Lee, Ryuuji Umeda, Lütfi Cenet, Adnan Yüksel, Jef Philipoom and Sameh Sidhom have the wildcards for Antalya.

The field is dominated by Turkish players. The best known, except the two wildcards, are Tayfun Tasdemir, Murat Naci Coklu, Can Capak and Savas Bulut. Forty players are in qualifying rounds, like Gülsen Degener, Salim Özdem, Murat Mehmet Goren and Murat Tüzul. Moreover forty Turkish players are also on 34 reserved places.

The ranked players for the final qualifying round are: Eddy Leppens, Tayfun Tasdemir, Javier Palazón, Murat Naci Coklu, Dong Kang Koong, Kouji Funaki, Nikos Polychronopoulos, Ruben Legazpi, Antonio Ortiz and Raimond Burgman.

The main event is on Friday, Saturday and Sunday 17, 18 and 19 February.