Thursday, July 07, 2011: Mateusz Sniegocki from Poland just defeated Scotsman Jayson Shaw with 9:6. With other famous player like Chris Melling and Imran Majid in the audience, Sniegocki wins the lag and starts the match with his first break. Both players left a very self-confident impression and at no time the spectator could get of the opinion that one of the two was about to get the match in his account for sure. Last Euro-Tour finalist Shaw as well as Sniegocki performed on a very high level. No wonder that none of them was able to take a bigger lead than one game over the other for a long time.
With the break box and alternate break format being used in this 9-ball event, the score came to a 5:4 lead for Sniegocki when Shaw decided to take a timeout. When he came back, he broke the balls and the rack turned into a safety match. It was Jayson Shaw to play a bad safety and give Sniegocki the chance to take a two-rack lead over him for the first time in the match. The Polish did not let that chance slip away from him and ran the rack to take a 6:4 lead. The next rack unfolded almost equally with Shaw sitting on the better end now. In a safety battle, Sniegocki played a bad safe and Shaw ran the rack to close the gap a bit and turn the score to 5:6. At that point of the match one could get the impression that Shaw was not focussed enough. He missed an easy shot and brought Sniegocki back to the table to take the rack and widen the gap to a 7:5 lead for him.
The next two racks saw dry breaks by both players with the opponent running the rack, bringing the match to an 8:6 lead for Sniegocki. In the 15th rack, after having used his timeout, Sniegocki broke the balls and again came up dry. Shaw went to the table and played a bad safety shot. That gave Sniegocki the chance to win the rack and the match with 9:6.
"I'm glad that I won this match", said Sniegocki after the match, "since I was very nervous and not confident." "Jayson is a very strong player who plays pretty fast and confident. Maybe the pockets are too tight here for him because when you play so fast, you are likely to make mistakes." "If I should pick the moment when I won the match, I think it was in the 12th rack when Jayson missed the cushion shot so I could get a two rack lead over him".
Other notable results include Vittorio de Falco (ITA) defeating Even Waernes (NOR) with 9:3, Nico Ottermann winning with 9:5 over Piotr Ostrowski (POL) and Jim Chawki (SWE) being victorious in his match over Sami Karttunen (FIN) with the same result.
The Euro-Tour event will be 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 event website www.eurotouronline.eu , follow us on twitter @EPBF_News or contact our press office.
