 Daryl Peach |
Day five of the World Pool Championship saw the final sixty four players competing in single elimination play and the day started with a bang.
Three time champion Earl Strickland was the first player eliminated when he lost to Vietnam's Luong Chi Dong. Strickland started out the match in control, but Dong came back to tie the match at 8-8. Dong missed a 9-ball at 8-8, but Strickland could not capitalize and Dong went on to win the match 10-8.
While the day had it's fair share of surprise results, possibly the biggest surprise came in the last match of the day as England's Daryl Peach sent defending Champion Ronnie Alcano to the sidelines early. Alcano led 4-2 early, but Peach took advantage of the soft break and ran six straight racks for an 8-4 lead. Alcano came back to the table to get back within two at 8-6, but a missed carom allowed Peach to close out the match at 10-6.
Another surprise on day five was Efren Reyes 10-5 loss to Russia's Konstantin Stepanov. Reyes continued the questionable play that we saw earlier in the event and never really looked in the match.
Early favorites Marlon Manalo, Dennis Orcollo and Ching-Shun Yang also failed to advance on day one.
At the end of the day's play, early favorite Shane Van Boening was a 15-2 favorite with Francisco Bustamante close behind at 8-1. Former champion Chia-Ching Wu was at 10-1 with Alex Pagulayan at 12-1. Check out www.stanjames.com for odds on all of the final thirty two players.
Marquee matches on tap for day six include Bustamante vs Nick Van Den Berg, Stepanov vs Jeff De Luna, Po-Cheng Kuo vs Oliver Ortmann and Ralf Souquet vs Niels Feijen.
Real time scoring and complete brackets are available at www.worldpoolchampionship.com
Photo courtesy of Lawrence Lustig
