Mika Immonen has won the 2009 World 10-Ball Championship in an amazing 11-6 win over Lee Van Corteza who was the Filipino favorite.
Immonen was slow on the start as Corteza took the lead however Immonen came back to win the 10-ball World Championship for 2009 after her tied them up at 2-2.
Ok, we haven't been updating everyone as much as we should on the pool tournaments for 2009 but it's becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with all of the changes to scheduled events across the year. Particularly when we now have previous years' tournaments happening in the same year!
Here's some detail on a few of the 2009 world pool championships;
- The World 10-Ball Championship are on at the moment as you may already know in Manila. Running from November 25 - 30th for 2009 at the World Trade Center Metro Manila in the Philippines.
At the time of writing this the World 10-Ball Champs is down to the final four with the semi-finals showing Corteza facing Alcaide and Lining up against Immonen.
- The WPA World Junior Championships for 2009 were held this month and the WPA announced two new world champions were created with Ruslan Chinakhov of Russia and Keng-Chun Lin of Taipei becoming the new WPA World Junior Champions.
The Qatar International Open 9-ball has been running from June 27 to July 7 2009;
Mika Immonen from the country of Finland won the 2009 Qatar International Open 9-Ball championship on July 6. Mika beat Ko Pin Yi of Chinese Taipei 13-9 in a competitive final 9 ball championship game.
Well done!
The WPA China Open is currently running (8/6/2009 - 14/6/2009) in Shanghai.
Earlier this year Peter Ebdon won the Bank of Beijing 2009 World Snooker China Open.
The WPA released last month that the WPA WORLD 8-BALL CHAMPIONSHIP 2009 which was scheduled for April has been postponed to later in the year.
A new date is yet be decided.
The global economical situation has been a strong factor in the postponement of this event.
Usually I would be able to add a post about what's going on with the latest event and potentially with the World Pool Championship itself but having a look around a few of the major sites it appears that there is a lot of confusion about whether or not the event is actually going to happen or not since last years one has still not happened.
The WPA site does not have any updates since late December 2008 after having announced that the world pool championships were going to be held in early 2009 however it looks like there is some type of in-fighting between the different pool and billiards associations about the event as well as the players associations jumping in the mix as well.
I'd love to hear from anyone who can email me and shed some light on what's going on with the events - please email me if you know - gary@playonlinepool.com.
The WPA have just announced that a new ranking system for the mens world pool ranking will be launched effective from the start of 2009.
One of the key things to look at are the how an event qualifies to be part of the ranking;
The criteria adopted for an event to qualify as a ranking tournament is as follows:- a) open to all players who are members of WPA affiliated organisations;
and b) offer minimum added prize money of USD100,000.
[In many] cases the players do not pay any entry fee, but are being offered good prize money, and to do it without even having to be a member of an organisation is no longer going to be acceptable.
The inaugural World 10 Ball Champs (WTBC), run over last week at the PICC, were won by Darren "Dynamite" Appleton from the UK who takes away the $100,000 first prize money.
Wu Chia-ching of China fought hard for what has been described as one of the most thrilling finals there have been at a WPA event.
Congratulations.
The total prize fund for the World Ten Ball Championships 2008 was;
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Champion $ 100,000 x 1 = $ 100,000
Runner-Up $ 40,000 x 1 = $ 40,000
Final Four $ 20,000 x 2 = $ 40,000
Magic Eight $ 10,000 x 4 = $ 40,000
Last 16 $ 4,500 x 8 = $ 36,000
Last 32 $ 3,000 x 16 = $ 48,000
Last 64 $ 2,000 x 32 = $ 64,000
Last 96 $ 1,000 x 32 = $ 32,000
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Total Prize Fund = $ 400,000
You can find more details on the win here.
