World 10 Ball Begins Today in General Santos

By: Erik Hjorleifson

Hello everybody after a 20 hour door to door travel my travelling partner John Morra and I landed in Manila ready to start our 2015 World 10-ball Championships adventure. We had a good couple of days of practice. I played a couple of small money matches and it was interesting to see how everything worked over here with the referees racking the balls, keeping score and calling fouls. It really is a pleasure to see how much this country loves the game.

Yesterday we caught our connecting flight to one of the southernmost islands in the Philippines to the city of General Santos. Home of the 2015 World 10 ball Championships and also home to tournament promoter Manny Pacquiao, multiple World Champion Boxer has taken his love of pool to a larger scale in the past year generously aiding in the funding of two open tournaments that he has called the MP GenSan Cup. These two events have featured doubles and singles competitions only this time Pacquiao has increased the total prize money to a level that the singles 10 ball event can be recognized as a world Championship event. Hopefully this could be the dawn of a new era for pool in the Philippines and could possibly have an impact on the game globally.

The host hotel for the event is the Green Leaf Hotel which is probably the most upscale hotel in General Santos. It is Located right across the street from the venue which is the SM mall, a 4 story modern shopping mall. The event will be played on 10 tables that unfortunately I have to admit are a little sub-par, also there is no carpeting in the playing area and the traction on the floor of the mall is not good, but the conditions will be the same for everybody and as we always do we will find a way to adapt.

Over the past 3 days various qualifiers have been held, 45 players started out each playing in single elimination tournaments where 8 players advanced to the main draw. There were 3 tournaments total and 24 of the 45 players qualified. I was sitting my friend John Morra and we were watching the third qualifier and he was pointing out to me 3 or 4 players that he was surprised weren't able to qualify in the first two tournaments. The majority of the players who qualified are Filipino and we will see if some of these unknowns are able to make an impact in the main draw.

As of the time of print the draw is done and the tournament will follow the WPA standard as of the last few years. Players are separated into double knockout brackets of 8 players, 4 of those will advance to the single knockout 64 player stage. About half the players will start at 11am on the 17th and the other half will start on the 18th. The draw is currently available at http://www.dropbox.com/s/mq6g8odml7lhrad/WTBC%20Group%20Stage.pdf?dl=0 ,   http://cuesportnation.com/ will be back tomorrow with first round update and as long as my playing schedule permits I will do my best to write some daily reports about all the latest throughout the tournament.

Special thanks goes out to my sponsors for the event http://www.interadcorp.com/ check it out for all your web and mobile development needs and http://charlotteroom.com/  one of Toronto's finest upscale billiard rooms.

Follow now live on the YouTube stream https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAdtLuUx5y8&feature=youtu.be. The time difference is 13 hours ahead.

Good Luck to our Canadian players, 

Erik Hjorleifson, 
Jason Klatt 
Stephan Doiron 
Martin Daigle 
John Morra
 Pahdahsung Shognosh
Alex Pagulayan