DAY ONE OF the Dynamic Billard Tampere Open in Finland completed this evening at the Tampere Exhibition and Sports Centre and from 168 starting players, 118 remain; 32 on the winners’ side and the rest on the losers’ side. Those players will be returning on Sunday morning when play resumes at 10.00 local time.
There were a few Euro Tour veterans in the field including Mika Immonen who won the inaugural Tour event over 30 years ago. The Iceman is still in it, and although he was relegated to the one-loss side by the Netherland’s Jan Rempe he bounced back with a win over fellow Finn Kimmo Kamotskin to keep his hopes alive.
Another blast-from-the-past is four-time Euro Tour winner, Sweden’s Marcus Chamat. ‘Napoleon’ has had a storied career in pool and still keeps his hand in. Like Immonen, he is now on the one-loss side after going down 9-5 to the very capable Mats Schnetje in his second match, but lived to fight another day with a win over Jani Kela (Finland).
Commented Chamat, “I wanted to come and support the event as it’s only a one-hour flight from Stockholm to Helsinki. The Finnish Federation are doing great stuff here, putting on the Euro Tour and European Championships. I didn’t have a lot of work at the moment so I figured I would come and play. Why not?
“I cannot say that I really prepared well, as I’d been working a lot and been very busy but the last few weeks, I’ve been off so I had some time to play a few games here and there. I still enjoy the game and one positive thing is that I have contact lenses now so I can see a little bit better. That’s really made a difference and I enjoy it much more when I play.
“You never know here. I played really well a few weeks ago in the Interpool Open where I lost to Casper Matikainen in the quarter-final and towards the end, I really found my game. I know it’s there somewhere and I feel motivated playing with my contacts now. I’m taking one match at a time and the more matches I get, the more dangerous I’m going to be!” he concluded.
Amongst a host of Finnish players competing this week, the highest ranked is Petri Makkonen, winner of the 2015 German Open on the Euro Tour. Makkonen too, found himself on the one-loss side, losing his second match to Turkey’s Onur Yildrim and will have to battle when he returns tomorrow.
Makkonen was in a reflective mood post-match, “He played pretty much perfect and I broke bad and when you don’t break well in this tournament it’s tough to win matches against good players. I’m just going to regroup for tomorrowand try and get going as you need to win a lot of matches now.
“All my matches are losers’ qualification now. I’ll just take one at a time and leave everything on the table. That’s the only solution for that. Over the years, Mika has done most of the work in Finland, winning world titles and things but I think I come a close second and I hope the young kids look up to us and you’d feel that you have done something right if they do. I feel a bit of pressure but you have to show some leadership.”
With two wins from two, including a 9-3 win over Estonia’s Mihkel Rehepapp in the second round, Poland’s Wojciech Szewczyk can look forward to a winners’ qualification match against local hope Aki Heiskanen on Sunday afternoon. The classy Pole is currently ranked No.8 on the ranking and could really climb if the next two days go well for him.
He said, “Delighted with the win. I fell behind 1-2 so I didn’t really expect to have a victory of that magnitude. It’s winners’ qualification tomorrow and it always feels good to be in that round as you have two chances to qualify but I’ll try my best to take advantage of the first one.
“I was surprised to see that all top six players are not here so whether there is a lot of maths involved, I’m not really focusing on that but if I get to the deeper stages, I’m sure someone will calculate that for me and let me know. I like that extra pressure or incentive to play better. I would love to be higher in the rankings and I think my all-time high was #6 so I have a good chance to beat that,” added Szewczyk.
The Women’s Euro Tour Tampere Open is also taking place this week as 43 players representing 13 countries will be in attendance. The event commences on Friday 27th May and concludes on Monday 29th. Tomorrow starts out with winners’ qualification and losers’ round two.
The third round of matches in the Longoni 9 Ball League, scheduled to take place on Friday night, were postponed and will now be rescheduled for the Euro Tour stop in Slovenia on Friday 29th July.
As well as the prize money, there are Tour ranking points on offer, so there is everything to play for. All Euro Tour tournaments are 9-ball and players compete in a double-elimination format, playing down to the last 32 competitors, and then single elimination until the finish. All matches are races to 9 racks with alternate break.
All the matches can be viewed live by visiting www.epbf.com/tournaments/eurotour/ and clicking on the ‘LIVE’ button. This will take you through to viewing options. In addition, selected matches will be streamed on Facebook Live on the EPBF page.
Results, live scoring, and draw are available at www.epbf.com