The Etisalat WPA World 8-Ball Championship began today with a press conference, the players meeting and a welcoming dinner. At the press conference the organizers thanked the players for their participation and the sponsors for making the event possible. The Gold Sponsor is the Prism Company and the rest include Dubai Sports Channel, Le Meridien Al Aqah Beach Resort, Adnoc, Pro Master, Al Ahli Holding Group, Al Diar Siji Hotel, Fujairah International Airport, Vopak Horizon, Fujairah Cement Industries, Knight Shot Billiards, Coral Residence Group, Crystal Arc, Millenium Avenue and Pepsi. Knight Shot announced that they will be giving a special prize for any player from the UAE who makes it into the final 16 group. This will include a pool table and other billiard items.
The players meeting featured Tournament Director Ishaun Singh who explained the format and the rules and took questions concerning timeouts, the shot clock (45 seconds) and other assorted queries.
From there we went to the gala welcoming dinner. Here we feasted on steak, sushi, chicken, veggies, Arabic bread and a wide selection of sweets. Then it was off to bed and a good nights rest preparing for the battles to come. First round of play kicks off at 3PM (Emirates time) on Monday.
The format for this event is eight groups of eight players in each group. Each of these groups will play double elimination races to eight games until we are left with only two players on both the winners and the one-loss side. Then we will have 32 players who will form the final single-elimination bracket. The players from the winners side will be seeded according to their performance and the players from the one-loss side will be drawn at random into the brackets.
Real-time scoring and bracket updates will be available throughout the tournament at AZBilliards.com.
