Bata heads Pinoys bid vs Norway in KO stage

MANILA, Philippines - The Philippines steps up its drive for the World Pool Team Championship as it slugs it out with Norway in one of the featured matches at the start of the knockout stage at the Tongzhou Luhe High School in Tongzhou, Beijing Wednesday.

The Filipinos, composed of Efren “Bata” Reyes, Francisco “Django” Bustamante, Dennis Orcollo and Rubilen Amit, capped their domination of Group A with a 6-0 rout of Croatia at the close of the three-day elims late Tuesday.

Team Phl is employing a unique strategy in all their matches, putting Reyes only in doubles matches, both the 8-ball and 10-ball with the Filipinos fancied to go all the way to the championship.

Norway will be bannered by Roger Rasmussen, Mats Schjetne, Matey Ullah and Ine Helvik.

Action is expected to be fierce in the single elims stage with the format presenting lots of opportunities for dramatic finishes and results.

With each contest between countries featuring six individual matches, there is a very distinct possibility that the two teams will end up tied at 3. In this case, the two teams will engage in a dramatic and highly difficult shootout to determine who advances and who goes home.

Under the format, the object ball (8-ball) will be placed in the middle of the foot rail at the same level as the first diamond. The cue ball will be placed on the head spot. Players have the choice to try and pocket the ball in either the left or right corner pockets. All players will play in sequence and the team to score six hits first with a margin of two or more (6-4, 7-5, etc.) will be the winner and will advance to the next round.

The field will be down to the final four Wednesday with the semifinals to be played today. The winners will dispute the crown worth $80,000 tomorrow.

In other round of 16 singles elims matches, Chinese-Taipei takes on India, Sweden battles Indonesia, Great Britain tests Australia, Poland collides with China 1, Germany squares off with Japan, South Korea tangles with Canada and China 2 faces Finland.