3-Cushion
SCHILTIGHEIM - He couldn't explain what went wrong at the start of his match, but sometimes things are going as they are. Thusly, Torbjörn Blomdahl won his match against Javier Palazón eventually even with a perfect final sprint of thirteen.
Blomdahl now leads the group with four match points after two matches. Tayfun Tasdemir and Filipos Kasidokostas are undefeated, but played one match less than Blomdahl. Javier Palazón and Dong Koong Kang may been considered near to the shutdown.
The big fight hasn't yet started in this group, in which two rounds are played: tomorrow (Saturday) at 15.00 Kasidokostas meets in his first match Tasdemir and in his second (22.00) he plays against Blomdahl. Those matches are deciding for the first positions in the group.
Filipos Kasidokostas started with eight in his game against Kang tonight and closed the match almost with the same score. He missed at eight and only needed one more point. In between the Greek changed good with bad moments, such as with runs of 5 and 6 in the 18th and 19th inning, following by four zeros. But then he started his run to the finish with 2,0, 8 and 1.
Dong Koong Kang had only two highlights in his match: in the fourteenth inning a run of eleven, in the 22nd a run of 9. It was by far not enough to threaten Kasidokostas at the end, because in his first ten innings the Korean scored only four times. The final score: 50-36 in 27 innings.
Blomdahl and Palazón were in balance for a long time, but not in a high quality start (19-17 in fifteen innings). Six misses of Blomdahl preceded the run of nine he made in the 26th inning. Four innings later, he made the thirteen and came at two points from the finish, which ended at 50-41 in 31 innings.
Javier Palazón, who as a young player had some great moments in the Agipi arena, is looking deperately for his form and was not helped by some luck in his game: his highest run was five, that says a lot about the positions that he found on the table during his own small runs.