Filipina Rubilen "Bingkay" Amit, the 2005 Manila Southeast Asian Games 9-ball and 8-ball gold medal winner was very close to winning another big tournament yesterday held at Tao-Yuan Mall in Taiwan. However, the 25-years-old prizefighter of Puyat Sports bowed to Shin-Mei Liu of Taiwan, the 2006 Doha Asian Games 9-ball gold medallist (9-6) in the final four yesterday.
During this hard-fought event, eventual winner Ga-Young Kim of Korea trounced another local bet Chieh-Yu Chou (9-4) in the semi-final matches to arrange a titular showdown with Liu. Despite the home court advantage, Kim crushed Liu (9-5) to bag the championships trophy plus the top prize worth 100,000 Taiwanese Dollars in the event dubbed as Pro Women's Invitational 9-ball. Liu settled for the runner-up prize worth 60,000 Taiwanese Dollars. While losing semi-finalists Amit and Chou, each received 40,000 Taiwanese Dollars for their efforts.
"She played (Liu) very well, the game was tied at six all, but Liu clustered the next three remaining racks." The Taguig resident Amit said in an exclusive interview yesterday when referring to his semi-final loss to Liu.
In fact, Liu was hot in the opening match taking a 3-0 commanding lead before Amit managed to tie the game at three-all. Amit added that the next racks were close with scores of three-all, four-all and six-all before Liu won the match at 9-6.
Amit earlier topped the Group D bracket with a similar 9-8 decision win against I-Yun Su and Hui-Shan Lai of Taiwan to advance in the final four according to Puyat Sports event manager Ish Caparras.
You may recall, the former Makati Call Center employee turned professional pool player's loss to eventual winner Xiao Ting-Pan of China for this year's Women's World 9-ball crown last April 5th through 8th in Tao-Yuan, Taiwan. In this event, Amit received the runner-up prize worth US$10,000 and a ticket in the upcoming SEAG in Thailand later this year according to Billiards and Snooker Congress of the Philippines (BSCP).
National women's coach Edgard "Boyet" Asonto revealed yesterday that Amit's next stop is the 3rd leg of the 4th annual SMB RP 9-Ball Open this weekend (August 18-19) at Celebrity Billiards and Bar in Bacolod City which is co-owned by Negros Billiard Stable (NBS) president Jonathan Sy. National women's team mates Iris Rañola of Zamboanga City and Mary-Ann Basas of Davao City are also competing in the annual SMB RP 9-Ball Open event.
