MATCHROOM Sport have (announced) a change in the format of the 2007 World Pool Championship in Philippines.
Double elimination play will be introduced for the first time in the nine years that the UK-based sports promotion company has been promoting the event.
Once again there will be 128 players competing in the tournament, which will be held in Manila from November 3 to November 11, and everyone will be aiming to follow in the footsteps of 2006 winner Ronnie Alcano (pictured right).
However, the old round-robin format has been replaced by a first round consisting of 16 groups of eight players, which will split the field from 128 to 64 competitors before the single-elimination knock-out phase.
This is quite a large change for the format of the pool world champs. Hopefully the new format will allow a fair and easy level of play for all players in the game. With changes of this size there are many questions and there are many players who will complain that is does not suit their particular style as well as it may for others. Hopefully all will turn out Ok as the players get into their matches when the champs start.
The eight players in each group will play a total of 10 matches between them. Two successive wins will see them into the last 64 while two straight defeats will see them eliminated of the tournament.
The final set of matches in the group will feature players with one win and one defeat fighting it out to stay in the competition. All first round matches will be a race to nine racks with the winner breaking.
Each group will be played out over one day on two tables and the first round matches will be completed over four days from Saturday, November 3 to Tuesday, November 6.
We'll keep you up to date with further details as they come to hand.
