3-Cushion
HURGHADA - The anthem sounded through the crowded room, the 32 players, who shortly before had held a minute's silence for the victims of violence in Egypt, left the arena after the ceremony and were ready for the start of the 2012 Hurghada World Cup.
The speakers in the arena were the governor of the Red Sea, the sponsor, the president of the Egyptian federation and finally UMB president Jean Claude Dupont, who officially opened the tournament.
Who will be the successor of Adnan Yüksel, the Turk who last year was the surprise winner? And who who will be the world's number one after this third World Cup of the year? Torbjörn Blomdahl defends his position on, but the competition is fierce.
Four days of preliminary rounds are behind us: from today all the world top players will be live on Kozoom in a battle over three days.
The draw on Wednesday pointed out that Torbjörn Blomdahl and Filippos Kasidokostas are in the upper schedule and can meet Kyung-Roul Kim, Peter Ceulemans, the luminary of the preliminaries, Adnan Yüksel and Jérémy Bury, last year's finalists in Hurghada.
Frédéric Caudron, the number two in the world, is in the lower half with amongst others Eddy Merckx, Martin Horn, Dick Jaspers, Sung-Won Choi and Marco Zanetti.
Torbjörn Blomdahl and Eddy Leppens have kicked off at 12.00. The other three matches in the session:
Murat Naci Coklu-Takeshima O
Jérémy Bury Riad Nady
Dani Sánchez-Tayfun Tasdemir.
The session at 13.30:
Adnan Yüksel-Lütfi Cenet
Kyung-Roul Kim Henry Diaz
Sameh Sidhom-Peter Ceulemans
Filippos Kasidokostas-Jae Guen Kim.