A day after the highly favored pair of Americans Rodney Morris and Corey Deuel, Taiwan's Yang Ching-shun and Wu-Chia-ching, Holland A (Niels Feijen and Nick Van Den Berg) were booted out in the event, there was another upset in the jam packed PartyPoker.net World Cup of Pool at the Outland Nightclub in Rotterdam, on Saturday.
The Filipino Team of Efren "Bata" Reyes and Francisco "Django" Bustamante failed to defend their title after crushing out in the quarter-final round in this 31 nation event which offers a total pot prize of $250,000.
The two Filipino warriors, both prize fighter of Puyat Sports stable succumbed to the tandem of Fu Jianbo and Li He-wen, of the rising China squad, 9-6, after Reyes failed to sink the Green 6-ball in the 14th frame that should have given team Philippines the equalizer at 7-all.
Li He-wen, the 2006 Manila World Pool Championship semi-finalists, his nick name Doreamon after a Japanese cartoon character, took the first rack after Bustamante made an error. From then, Team China known as "the sleeping giant" clustered three consecutive racks to take a 4-0 lead before team Philippines won their first rack in the 5th frame.
A spectacular 6-9 combination from Fu Jianbo moved China one step closer to victory and gave them a four-rack advantage at 5-1 but the Philippines trimmed down the gap at two racks (3-5) after winning the 7th and 8th frame.
After posting a stunning upset KO win against the Philippines team, China's next opponent will be team Japan (Satoshi Kawabata and Naoyuki Oi) for the semi-final round, who won over Singapore (Chan Keng Kwang and Toh Lian Han), 9-5.
China had reached the quarter-finals thanks to an 8-1 victory over South Africa (Juan de Beer and Clinton Rossouw) and an 8-6 triumph over France (Stephan Cohen and Vincent Facquet).
Meanwhile, Finland (Mika Immonen and Markus Juva) and Canada (Edwin Montal and Alain Martel) hurdled their respective rivals to dispute the other semi-finals berths.
Finland outplayed Switzerland (Dimitri Jungo and Marco Tschudi), 9-4, while Canada scored a similar 9-4 win over Belgium (Serge Das and Noel Bruynooghe), a late substitute of no-shows Malaysia.
Finland, Canada, China and Japan assured already of $16,000 for reaching the semi-final round, while losing quarter-finalists Philippines, Singapore Switzerland and Belgium had to settle for a $10,000 pay check. The winning pairs here will receive $60,000 while $30,000 goes to the runner-up.
(Report from MARLON BERNARDINO)
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