NEWS  May 1, 2007 BA Party – The title and a semi-final

Last week, the Billard Aktuell Party was played in the extended Pool & Blues in Bergisch Gladbach. The three owners Uli, Frank and Mike, together with numerous helping hands, had inaugurated the new floor especially for the BA Party, after eight months of hard work. Even if they claimed that all was not yet finished, I never had the feeling anything was missing.

On Saturday morning, the big 8-Ball tournament started. It was all but an easy task for the four BA friends Jens, Klaus, Lutz and Yasin to kick of the field of 116 players on time.

The event was played in 29 groups of four players round robin on one table. The matches were played in races to three with loser’s break, which is that the player who lost a rack has the right to break at the next rack. The two first ranks of each group were qualified for an intermediate round, plus an additional 6 spots for lucky losers.

I won my three group matches, but had to struggle hard in my first match against Christoph Eck „The Tabak“ – when winning 3-2, I missed one 8 ball and once the last ball before the 8 ball. The intermediate round was now running faster, since two tables were available for each group. Again, I won all my matches, although I had another 3-2 fight to win.

In the final round, the format was to win 4 matches in a KO group and my opponents were: Frank Krahwinkel, Axel Olbrich, Sebastian Bibrach and Jürgen Wulf. I could also defeat these four players and had entered the final against senior player Dieter Sellbach. Already 20 years ago, we played each other in the First German Division, even if the circumstances are a bit different today.

I lost the break shot to Sellbach, but he did not pocket any ball upon his break. So, I won the first rack. In rack 2, Sellbach could not benefit from his break, missed a ball and I was leading 2-0. Then Sellbach ran out rack 3 (2-1). Now, I could break fort he first time and made use of this opportunity to lead 3-1. Upon another blind break by my opponent, I had to sit on the table to reach my entry ball and to choose the better colours. I managed to do so and increased my lead to 4-1. In rack 6, again no ball was pocketed upon the break, but the balls were positioned in such a difficult manner that I played a safety. The safety battle went back and forth, but then, Sellbach opted for a more aggressive solution and ran out the most difficult table - 4-2. Now, I had the break and my first match point. I pocketed a ball and manoeuvred my way through the full balls until the 8 ball. The last 8 ball was no problem either and by winning 5-2, I won the title, in spite of some names supporter „Bulle Benson“ from Wolfsburg called me.

Ralf - Winner 8Ball