Manila here I come

I have been sitting here for three hours now. 20 minutes more to go and I will enjoy my emergency exit seat at the window of this huge monster plane.
There was a friendly woman at the Japan Airlines check in desk who coincidentally comes from the Philippines. After mentioning that I am best friends with Efren "Bata" Reyes she tagged my luggage as priority and gave me the best seat in the house upstairs (economy)



Just found out about my first match on th 5th. It's going to be aganist the talented kid from Taiwan Ko Pin-Yi who just won the third qualifier in Manila. Won't be an easy match.

Manila here I come...


Halloween morning

Well, I arrived at 9.50pm on Tuesday the 30th in Manila. The flight was long but not too bad. I had a connection in Tokio and was picked up by my friend Ernie right outside the plane in Manila. He is da man and everybody knows him at the airport !

Ernie skipped all the lines at the immigration desk, even the diplomat line (pool players should be treated like that all over the world ;-)

After having a late dinner with my friends Biboy and Marika I hit the sheets around 2am, but found myself awake at 6am in the morning again.

About an hour later downstairs, enjoying my breakfast I see three German fellows walking in armed with their cue cases. You can guess the answer of my question "Coming or going to practice?"


Thursday, 1st

Two more days to go before the tournament starts. More and more players are coming into the city. Most of the action happens at a poolroom called Oneside. Gambling around the clock, all the filipino stars are there, the place is packed. I have never been there before, but I might check it out myself one of these days. Sure, I will take some pictures...

I prefer the homie atmosphere like the poolroom Sidespin (former Ferrule). The place is small, very nice with new recovered tables. The people are very friendly and I feel comfortable here.



I spent a few hours practicing at the tight pocket table near the entrance and enjoyed great company with my friends Bogee and Biboy. Jay Helfert was there too. We played for an hour and had a nice chat. I will go there again tonight. Ralf Souquet and Thomas Engert have promised there appearance too.




Took me a while to update I know. I wasn't too happy with my performance. Gonna try to be more up to date in the future...

I didn't get out of the group stage. First time ever. I guess this tournament was symptomatic for my year.

Lost my first match against Ko Pin-Yi. He is 18years of age and a very promising Taiwanese player for the future. Very composed with great technique he didn't make too many errors against me. There are three Taiwanes juniors with great potential. Wu Chia Ching already became World Champion with 16. Another Wu, double Junior World Champion was supposed to be the best of the three but as usual he is the laziest of all. The Taiwanese coach sees in Ko Pin-Yi the star for the future. Well....he has my name on his belt already...

I played okay against Ko, but against I definately didn't get the rolls. A very early out turned me all to soon into a spectator.

Here are some impressions of the tournament...






I spent a lot of time at the venue, even after I was out. For most of the time I thought Bustamante is gonna make it. He seemed to be on a mission. He needed average two to three innings to finish a set to 10 or 11. I saw the controversial situation against Daryl Peach on tv and my first impression was foul. The score was 10:9 for Bustamante when Django broke, had a possible out but himself on the two ball. He kicked and kissed the 9 in. BUT - he hit the 9 first. It was the closest call I have ever seen. The referee Nigel watched the shot over and over again on tv. Finally he made the right decision - foul. Daryl Peach proved his mental strengh and cleared the table and the next rack to win the match.
Some people say he was not suppose to ask for the replay on tv and he should have made a decision right away. But I don't blame him. It was a very tough call and why not use the replay when the situation allows.
I feel sorry for Bustamante, he is overdue to win a title. Well he had his chance and somehow he always seem to lose in the quarterfinal or semifinal. Weird...

Great tournament for the Europeans. With Vilmos Foeldes, Karl Boyes and Daryl Peach three out of four players from Europe in the Semis - respect.

Daryl showed strong nerves. He had to fight 3000 Filipinos in the final. Eventually that is what cost Roberto Gomez the title. He was dominating all of his matches, won 10:1, 10:2, 11:0 and 11:4. The softbreak was working for him (One little comment on the softbreak - it's terrible for the spectators. I heard the tv ratings dropped because of that. It's just plain boring. I am sure next year Matchroom is going to do something against it) Gomez was facing a lot of new circumstances in the final. Matchroom replaced table one with table two, which meant the softbreak wasn't working anymore. Also Gomez never had a close match in the tournament, the final should be different. At the end Gomez was a broken man. You could tell by his bodylanguage that he had lost his confidence. The screaming and yelling spectators just intensified the pressure on him. That's why he missed a very easy Nineball when the score was 15:15.

After the event I got to hang out a few days with my friends here in Manila. We finally went to OneSide. Looks like nobody there know that I don't gamble, because as soon as I opened the door, I had ten guys jumping on me, ready to get some action...