The 2006 World Cup of Pool (also known as the 2006 PartyPoker.com World Cup of Pool for the purposes of sponsorship) was a professional

nine-ball pool Nine-ball (sometimes written 9-ball) is a discipline of the cue sport pool. The game's origins are traceable to the 1920s in the United States. It is played on a rectangular billiard table with at each of the four corners and in the middle of ...

competition, the first

World Cup of Pool The World Cup of Pool is an annual international single-elimination tournament for doubles teams in nine-ball pool competition. The event has been dominated by the Philippines and China, with both nations winning the event on three occasions. His ...

, a scotch doubles knockout championship representing 32 national teams. The event was held at the Newport Centre in

Newport Newport most commonly refers to: *Newport, Wales *Newport, Rhode Island, US Newport or New Port may also refer to: Places Asia *Newport City, Metro Manila, a Philippine district in Pasay Europe Ireland *Newport, County Mayo, a town on the ...

, Wales, from 22 to 27 August 2006. The event was held as a single-elimination tournament, for a total prize fund of $250,000 with $60,000 being awarded to the winner. The tournament was organised by Matchroom Sport, sponsored by poker website Partypoker, and broadcast on Sky TV. The event was won by the Filipino team of

Efren Reyes Efren Manalang Reyes (born August 26, 1954), popularly known by the nickname "Bata" (English: "Kid"), is a Filipino professional pool player. Reyes is widely considered one of the greatest pool players of all time. A winner of over 100 inte ...

and

Francisco Bustamante Francisco Bustamante (born December 29, 1963) is a Filipino professional pool player from Tarlac, Central Luzon and the 2010 World Nine-ball Champion, nicknamed "Django", after the lead character of the 1966 film of the same name,Earl Strickland Earl Strickland (born June 8, 1961) is an American professional pool player who is considered one of the best nine-ball players of all time. He has won over 100 championship titles and three world titles. In 2006 he was inducted into the Billiar ...

and

Rodney Morris Rodney Morris (born 25 November 1970 in Anaheim, California, USA) is a professional pool player of Chamorro - Hawaiian descent. Nicknamed "Rocket" he currently resides in Acworth, Georgia. Rodney married his wife Rheyannon in July 2020. Career I ...

13–5 in the final. The event saw multiple world pool champions in the field, as well as

snooker Snooker (pronounced , ) is a cue sports, cue sport played on a Billiard table#Snooker and English billiards tables, rectangular table covered with a green cloth called baize, with six Billiard table#Pockets 2, pockets, one at each corner and o ...

world champions in Steve Davis and Ronnie O'Sullivan. The unseeded Vietnamese team of

Nguyen Thanh Nam Nguyễn () is the most common Vietnamese surname. Outside of Vietnam, the surname is commonly rendered without diacritics as Nguyen. Nguyên (元）is a different word and surname. By some estimates 39 percent of Vietnamese people bear this su ...

and Lương Chí Dũng reached the semi-finals, where they won $8,000 each, three-times the country's national average wage.

Format

The 2006 World Cup of Pool was a pairs

nine-ball Nine-ball (sometimes written 9-ball) is a discipline of the cue sport pool. The game's origins are traceable to the 1920s in the United States. It is played on a rectangular billiard table with at each of the four corners and in the middle of e ...

tournament played at Newport Centre in

, Wales. The tournament was played between 22 and 27 August 2006 as scotch doubles, with players taking shots alternatively. Matches were played as a -to-nine until the final, which was played as a race-to-thirteen. The tournament was a single-elimination bracket, consisting of 32 teams. The event was played with the alternating system, as to the traditional ''winner breaks'' as seen in other nine-ball events. The tournament was the inaugural

event, sponsored by Partypoker, and created by Matchroom Sport. The event was filmed and broadcast by Matchroom Sport across 31 single hour programs on Sky TV.

Prize fund

A total of $250,000 was made available for the prize pool, with $60,000 being awarded to the winning team. Money earned by the team was shared between their players. A breakdown of prize money is shown below:

Teams

The field consisted of 32 teams, with England having two teams. The participating teams are shown below, numbers in brackets denote seeded teams. * (Luc Salvas and Tyler Edey) (8) * (Philipp Stovanovic and Ivan Kralj) (15) * (Wang Hung-hsiang and Yang Ching-shun) (5) * (

Roman Hybler Roman Hybler (born 27 December 1977 in Liberec, Czech Republic) is a Czech professional pool player. Hybler is most well known for winning the ''2002 German Open'' Euro Tour event. Career Hybler took up pool aged 12. His first club was t ...

and Michal Gavenciak) * A ( Raj Hundal and Ronnie O'Sullivan) (13) * B ( Steve Davis and

Daryl Peach Daryl Peach (born 8 March 1972) is an English professional pool player, from Lancashire, who resides in Blackpool, England. He won the 2007 WPA World Nine-ball Championship, where he defeated the Philippines' Roberto Gomez 17–15 in the fina ...

) * ( Mika Immonen and

Markus Juva Markus Juva (born 4 June 1975 in Helsinki, Finland) is a professional Finnish pool player. At the 2007 World Cup of Pool, Juva and partner Mika Immonen reached the final, only to lose 11–10., and competed in the event on four other occasions. ...

) (7) * (

Thomas Engert Thomas Engert is a German professional pool player. Engert won the 2004 International Challenge of Champions beating fellow German Thorsten Hohmann in the finals. When he returned to the tournament one year later, Engert was close to winning ...

and Oliver Ortmann) (4) * (Lee Chenman and Kong Man-ho) * (Vilmos Foldes and Gabor Solymosi) * (Dharminder Lilly and Alok Kumar) * (Imran Ibrahim and Ricky Yang) * ( Tommy Donlon and Paddy McLaughlin) * (

Fabio Petroni Fabio Petroni (born 30 March 1972 in Rome, Italy) is an Italian professional pool player. Career Fabio Petroni was born in 1972 in Rome, Italy and began playing billiards when he was 13 years old. In 1993, he became the first Italian champion ...

and Angelo Millauro) (10) * (Maasaki Tanaka and Satoshi Kawabata) (12) * (Jeong Young-hwa and Lee Gun-jae) (14) * (Patrick Ooi Fook Yuen and Ibrahim Bin Amir) (16) * ( Tony Drago and Alex Borg) * ( Nick van den Berg and Niels Feijen) (2) * (

and

Francisco Bustamante Francisco Bustamante (born December 29, 1963) is a Filipino professional pool player from Tarlac, Central Luzon and the 2010 World Nine-ball Champion, nicknamed "Django", after the lead character of the 1966 film of the same name,Radosław Babica Radosław Babica (Born 18 July 1979) is Polish professional pool player from Kielce, who reached number 12 in the World Pool-Billiard Association world rankings in 2009. Career Babica final reached the European Pool Championships final of the ...

and Mariusz Rote) (9) * (Fahad Mohammadi and Bashar Hussain) * (

Konstantin Stepanov Konstantin Stepanov (born 26 September 1983) (russian: Константин Степанов) is a Russian professional pool player. In 2002 he was the Russian 8-ball champion. During the 2006 WPA Men's World Nine-ball Championship he survived th ...

and Konstantin Zolotilov) (11) * (Michael Valentine and

Pat Holtz Pat Holtz (born 27 November 1968) is a Scottish professional pool player. Career Early life He was born in Hamilton, Scotland and comes from a family of three older brothers and one younger sister, and has one daughter. Holtz has been playing p ...

) * (Chan Keng Kwang and Toh Lian Han) * (David Anderson and Yulan Govender) * ( David Alcaide and Rafael Guzman) * ( Marcus Chamat and

Tom Storm Tom Storm (born 16 March 1965 in Borlänge, Sweden) is a former Swedish professional pool player. Storm was the runner-up at the 1996 WPA World Nine-ball Championship. Storm represented Europe at the Mosconi Cup twice, in 1994 and 1995. Storm ha ...

) (6) * (Tepwin Arunnath and Amnuayporn Chotipong) * (

Earl Strickland Earl Strickland (born June 8, 1961) is an American professional pool player who is considered one of the best nine-ball players of all time. He has won over 100 championship titles and three world titles. In 2006 he was inducted into the Billiar ...

and

) (3) * (Nguyen Thanh Nam and

Luong Chi Dung Liang (Romanization used in China, ) is an East Asian surname of Chinese origin. The surname is often transliterated as Leung (in Hong Kong) or Leong (in Macau, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines) according to its Cantonese and ...

) * ( Rob McKenna and Ben Davies)

Summary

Early rounds (first–second round)

The first round was played between 22 and 24 August. The Filipino team of

and

for the first time in the event, but still defeated the Korean team 9–6. Davis commented post-match, "It was hard to get ahead – every time we took the lead they got back into it but we stuck at it and came good in the end." The second England team, however, lost on a to Spain. Raj Hundal and Ronnie O'Sullivan trailed 0–4 after just 20 minutes, but tied the match at 7–7. O'Sullivan on the break in rack 15, but Rafael Guzmán of Spain missed a shot on the to allow the English team to lead 8–7. The Spanish side however took the next two frames to win the match. In travelling to the event, Luc Salvas lost his , so he and Canadian partner Tyler Edey shared a cue, but still won 9–5 over Thailand. Sweden and Hong Kong featured a deciding rack. Hong Kong trailed 1–4, 6–2 and 8–5, but tied the match at 8–8. With just the final two balls remaining, Lee Chenman made a difficult to allow the Hong Kong team to win 9–8. Chenman later commented that the odds of 2/1 against the team winning prior to the match pushed them to victory. In their match against the host Wales team, the Germany team of

and Oliver Ortmann took an early 6–0 lead, and won 9–2. The Japanese team received a walkover against Indonesia, as the later failed to secure visas to compete at the event. The unseeded Vietnamese team of

and Lương Chí Dũng won 9–8 over Croatia in a match full of errors. The Dutch team of Niels Feijen and Nick van den Berg defeated the Scottish pair 9–5. The second round was played 24 and 25 August. The remaining United Kingdom team, the England B side were eliminated by the US team of

and

. The teams were tied at 3–3 but the US team won six straight racks to win 9–3. Fifth seed Taiwan were tied at 4–4 with Japan, before winning the next five racks to win 9–4. Hong Kong completed their second 9–8 win, this time over 11th seed Russia. The Canadian side trailed 4–7, but won the next four racks to lead 8–7 over the Czech team. However, the Czechs won the final two racks to reach the quarter-finals. The Filipino team defeated Malaysia 9–5.

Later rounds (quarter-finals–final)

The quarter-finals were played on 26 August. The Vietnam team of Nguyen Thanh Nam and Lương Chí Dũng won their third match in the tournament 9–8, this time over the Italian team. The Italians led the match 8–7, but a and table-length shot on the by Nguyen allowed the Vietnam team to win the match. The German team of Ortmann and Engert defeated the Taiwanese team 9–4. The Philippine team (and top seeds) defeated the Czech Republic 9–6. The Filipino team won the first three frames, but won just one of the next seven to trail 4–6. However, they then won the next five frames to win the match. Bustamante called the match "scary", and said that they had "played badly". With pre-tournament odds of 150/1, the Hong Kong team were defeated 3–9 against the American team. The semi-finals were played 27 August. The first semi-final was held between the Philippines and Germany. The Filipino team led 5–4, and won rack 10 with a fluke, escaping from a snooker and took the next to lead 7–4. The German team won the next three racks to tie the match 7–7. The Philippines won the next rack, before Ortmann missed banking the 2-ball in rack 16 and the Filipino team cleared the table to win 9–7. The second semi-final was held between the Vietnam and US teams. The unseeded Vietnam team had already beaten three seeded teams to get to the semi-finals, and won the opening rack. They then came from behind to tie the match at 3–3, before the US team won three racks in a row. The US team also had a three rack advantage at 8–5 to go to the . Nguyen made a difficult shot on the 9-ball in rack 14, and also won rack 15 to trail 7–8. Breaking to go , Nguyen missed a shot with the cue behind his back on the allowing the US team to take the rack and win 9–7. Even in losing, the pair won $8,000 each, three-times the national average wage in Vietnam. The final was contested on the evening of the same day as a race-to-13 racks, between Efren Reyes and Francisco Bustamante of the Philippines and Earl Strickland and Rodney Morris of the US. The final was attended by a crowd of 900 people, the majority of which were Expatriates supporting the Philippines. With the scores tied at 4–4, the Philippine team won 7 consecutive racks, to take a 11–4 lead, and eventually win the final 13–5. Morris said of the match: "That was pretty disappointing. After 4–4 it didn't go our way although the match was closer than the score suggested but when it went to 7–4 we were both pretty deflated and felt it slipping away. We never really got a clear shot off the break and it was a tough hill to climb but they played great – the way they were supposed to so congratulations to them." Bustamante commented that the event win was due to his partner's play saying, "Efren played lots of unbelievable shots; some of them I've never seen in my life! That's why we won."

Tournament bracket

Below is the results from the event. Teams in bold denote match winners. Numbers to the left of teams represents the team's seedings.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:World Cup Of Pool 2006

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