With the world's best to a new kick-off

ANTALYA - The World Cup in Antalya, the first of this year, will be relaunched today (12.00 Turkish time) for the main tournament. The preliminaries have been closed last night, twelve players have qualified directly, four numbers two proceeded through the backdoor.

With 32 players the World Cup starts off for its showdown, in the Limak Limra hotel, where it's mainly good to stay inside these days because of the abundant rainfall. With 32 world class players at the tables, for the final victory, for the points and the prestige. The knockout system means now the immediate shutdown in case of loss.

Frédéric Caudron, the number one in the world, will soon come to the kick off in a game against the surprising Turkish champion Ahmet Alp. The Belgian defends his points on top of the ranking (401 points) ahead of Torbjörn Blomdahl (390), Eddy Merckx (358), Dani Sánchez (316) and Sung-Won Choi (301), in the knowledge that the points of the Trabzon World Cup 2011 (winner Merckx) will be recuded after this tournament.

For the spectators on Kozoom it will be even more attractive from now on: in each session, four games will be played, all four with live coverage. That means that every billiard lover can watch his favorite player or can switch to other attractive matches.

Before the 32 players step into a new adventure, a short round-up of yesterday:

Roland Forthomme was the great luminary of the final round with a spectacular final rush against Javier Teran: the Belgian attacked from 24 to 38 points with a run of 14 and so secured his victory.

With his average, Forthomme ended up slightly above his opponent's score (2.222 against 2.000). That were the best averages from the session: Murat Tüzül, who won his group in which also Lutfi Cenet performed and Sameh Sidhom recorded 1.632, Durk Hee Hwang was even with 1.675 the second in his group in which Savas Bulut was the winner with 1.176.

Roland Forthomme also shone with the highest run (14), before Javier Teran and Durk Hee Hwang (12), Murat Tüzül (11) and Sameh Sidhom (10).

The Turkish players are with seven in majority in the final schedule, before the Koreans with six and the Belgians and Dutch with three.

For the first knockout round there are some extremely interesting games on the schedule.

What about:
Sung-Won Choi-Tayfun Tasdemir (last year's spectacular showdown in the Antalya World Cup).
Dick Jaspers Javier Teran
Martin Horn-Lütfi Cenet
Jérémy Bury-Nikos Polychronopoulos
Jean Paul de Bruijn-Javier Palazón
Kyung-Roul Kim-Dong Koong Kang

Filippos Kasidokostas-Luis Aveiga
Roland Forthomme-Murat Tüzül.

The schedule for the 1/16 finals:

12.00 (11.00 West European):
Caudron-Alp
Cho-Yüksel
Zanetti-Hwang
Jaspers-Teran

14.30:
Horn-Cenet
Bury Polychronopoulos
De Bruijn-Palazón
Sánchez-Christiani

17.00:
Merckx-Takeshima
Coklu-Hwang
Choi-Tasdemir
Sidhom-Bulut

19.30:
Kim-Kang
Kasidokostas-Aveiga
Forthomme-Tüzül
Blomdahl-Romero.