NEWS October 29, 2007 ET Swiss Open 9-Ball – Early elimination

The 6th stop of this year’s EuroTour in Frauenfeld saw only 197 competitors, a bit less than usually. One of the reasons was certainly that only 16 tables were available and the field had to be limited.

As a seeded player in started in group G and had first a walk-through. In the first match in the winner bracket, I played the Polish player Maciej Kietpinski, whom I did not know, but in spite of a great number of mistakes, I won 10-2. The opponent was not playing bad and pocketed a few difficult balls, but then, he committed easy mistakes, certainly due to a lack of experience.

In round two of the winner bracket, my opponent was the Greek player Micca Georgopulos who lives in Germany. Again, I did not play well and made too many mistakes, partly due to a flu which turned out to become more and more intense. I coughed and sniffled myself through the match and although I lost 4-10, I had enough opportunities to win the match. Just a few hours later, I had to lay the next Greek player by the name of Nick Malai. It was the same as before. Not much luck upon my break and many mistakes. Finally, I lost again, this time 7-10, but even if the score was tighter than before, the defeat was not necessary. So, I finished 65th, which had no incidence on the overall ranking, where I remained on rank 7.

The semi-finals:

Mark Gray (GBR) – David Alcaide (ESP) 10-9

Vilmos Földes (HUN) – Oliver Ortmann (GER) 10-6

The British player Mark Gray won the final against the Hungarian player Vilmos Földes 10-7 and won his first EuroTour title. With this success, Mark Gray could extend the success ratio of the British players, since three of the last four Eurotour winners came from the British island.