Wednesday, 01 August 2012: Today, the 9-ball competition started at the Dynamic Billiard European Youth Championships.
One player really drew the attention of the audience: Leonid Klishar from the Ukraine. In his first round match, he played Miika Myllymaeki (FIN). Though Klishar was leading 7:5, he was not able to pocket the deciding 9-ball. Instead, Myllymaeki joined Klishar on the hill. Only at 7:7, Klishar was able to get the final point and win the match with 8:7.
As if that was not enough for one day, Klishar repeated that result in his next round. This time he played Roberto Bartol from Croatia. It was the Croatian player who drew first blood in the match. He even accomplished a comfortable lead at 4:1 over Klishar. Then Klishar fought back and the match went head to head from 5:5 on. Though Bartol was leading 7:6 first, Klishar was again able to stand the heat and win the match with 8:7. Great performance by the Ukrainian junior so far.
Other notable results include defending Champion Wojciech Szewczyk (POL) winning his opening match over Andrey Seroshtan (RUS) with 8:6. Jesse Kivela (FIN) managed to defeat Russian star player Vitaly Pavlukhin with 8:6 in the winner's qualification round and sent him to the loser's side.
In the girl's division, all favourite players won their matches. In the lower part of the flowchart, Nataliya Seroshtan (RUS) will have to player her next match against Kamila Khodjaeva (BEL) while Oliwia Czuprynska (POL) will have to deal with Veronika Ivanovskaia (GER). These matches will be played tomorrow at 10:30 CET.
The tournament will continue today with the quarter-finals of the 8-ball competition at 16:30 CET.
The event is hosted by the European Governing Body for Pool, the European Pocket Billiard Federation (EPBF) and organized by International Billiard Promotion (IBP). For further information and reference please go to the federation website www.epconline.eu , follow us on twitter @EPBF_News or contact our press office.