THE deadly duo of Filipino Efren "Bata" Reyes and Francisco "Django" Bustamante are back to defend their title this year taking the pairs of Michael "The Yeti" Valentine and Pat "Silky" Holtz of Scotland when the 2007 PartyPoker.net World Cup of Pool gets underway tonight at the Outland nightclub in Rotterdam, Holland.
Reyes and Bustamante, playing under the banner of Puyat Sports clinched the inaugural trophy last August when they defeated Team America spearheaded by Rodney "Rocket" Morris and Earl "The Pearl" Strickland in the final at the Newport Centre, Newport, Wales in front of a large partisan crowd.
The Larkhall, Scotland native Holtz is not a push over, in fact in the last 12 months he is the Scottish 9-Ball Champion, reached the last 16 in the World Pool Championship, Irish 9-Ball Masters Champion, three Scottish Tour wins, and semi-finalist at the 2007 World Pool Masters.
Valentine from Grangemouth, Scotland is a former UK pool winner. Both, Holtz and Valentine, who idolize Bata Reyes lost in the last year's edition against Holland (Niels Feijen and Nick van Den Berg) in round 1, 9-5.
If the Philippines wins in their first round assignment, they will face the survivor of Russia ((Konstantin Stepanov and Ruslan Chinakhov) versus Croatia ((Philipp Stojanovic and Ivica Putnik) tussle.
A total of 31 different countries will be represented in the scotch doubles, winner-break format.
There is a $250,000 prize fund, which will be split up as follows: Winners $60,000 for the pair, runner-up $30,000, semi-finalists $16,000, quarter-finalists $10,000, last 16 $5,000, first round losers $3,000.
Meanwhile, Taiwan fielded the tandem of Wu Chia-ching and Yang Ching-shun opposite Denmark headed by Lotfy Bahram and Kasper Kristoffersen.
United States will parade Rodney Morris and Corey Deuel opposite Malta's Tony Drago and Alex Borg.
In other matches saw, Italy (Fabio Petroni and Bruno Muratore) versus (Stephan Cohen and Vincent Facquet); China (Li He-wen and Fu Jian-bo) versus South Africa (Juan de Beer and Clinton Rossouw).
(Report from MARLON BERNARDINO)
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