What was once a field of 128 hopefuls, has now been trimmed to two players who will compete on Sunday for the 2004 World Pool Championship.
Alex Pagulayan, in his second consecutive WPC Final, will take on Pei-Wei Chang in a race to 17 on Sunday.
Pagulayan started Saturday play with an 11-10 victory over Fong-Pang Chao. Pagulayan held a 10-5 lead in the match, but was kept in the chair while Chao ran four straight racks to tie the score at 10-10. The final game came down to a safety battle on the one-ball which Pagulayan finally won to allow him to run out the final rack.
Pagulayan was not the only player scoring a hill-hill win in the first round of play on Saturday. As a testament to how competitive the final eight players were, three of the four matches went to 10-10 before being decided. 'The Little Monster' Po-Cheng Kuo defeated Chin-Ching Kang 11-10 and Pei-Wei Chang defeated the final American hopeful Johnny Archer 11-10.
In the final round of play on Saturday, Pagulayan scored an 11-4 win over Kuo and Chang scored an 11-9 win over Chamat to set up the final match on Sunday between Pagulayan and Chang.
Final 64 brackets are posted and up to the minute match scores are always available on the official website for the World Pool Championship at www.worldpoolchampionship.com
Photo courtesy of Matchroom Sport
