Focus on small Snooker-countries - Part 4: Asia M-Z

Hello my dear readers,

as I was a little sick, and had some real life to deal with as well, it took a while until I was able to write, what you are reading at the moment. Its the second part on my focus on snooker players from Asia. The first part you can read here. (it was about players from Bahrain, Cyprus, Hong Kong and India).

So here we go:

Malaysia

Malaysia had a main tour player in 2005/06: Moh Keen Ho, who qualified by winning the Asian junior title 2005 at the age of 18. He remained without win though, while his best result was a 7:9 defeat to Welshman Paul Davies. A little more information and a picture of him can be found here.

Oman

To be honest: I couldn't find out much about Ahmed Basheer Al-Khusaibi. He played at the wildcard stages of the Bahrain Masters 2008, and he maybe would be totally forgotten, if his opponent Marcus Campbell wouldnt have played a 147 against him. But he did and so I list him here, in contrast to the wildcard players from Qatar and Saudi-Arabia at the same tournament. Oh by the way: the match ended 0-5.

Pakistan [updated]

In contrast to Malaysia and Oman, there a couple of notable players of Pakistan: 

Most successful without doubt: Shokat Ali. Although born in England, he played for Pakistan, the country of his parents.

He became pro in 1991 and made it to the Last 16 of the Grand Prix 1998, beating class players like Jimmy White. Three years later, he made it to the Last 16 again - this time at the Thailand Masters - and surprisingly beat Ronnie O'Sullivan (!) there to go for the only ranking quarterfinal of his career, where he lost to Ken Doherty.

In the world rankings he climbed to number 34 in 2003/04, which is his career best. He fell of the tour in 2006/07, but played a few PTCs as an amateur. He also finished third at the World Games 2001 in Japan. Together with Stuart Pettman he owns a snooker club in Preston now.

Mohamed Saijad appeared at the wildcard stage of the Shanghai Masters 2010, where he forced former world champion Ken Doherty to play a decider. In the end the favorite won 5:4. He was also part of Pakistans duo at the World Cup 2011 in Thailand. Together with Sahid Aftab this team achieved a surprise win against Ireland (3:2) and stole Wales two frames too, finishing third in the group stages.

Farhan Mirza was a main tour player in 2000/01, when he won a total of two games (one of them a walkover), reaching the Last 128 of the Thailand Masters and the World Championship.

Shahram Changezi played pretty successful at the PTC3 in 2011/12. He was able to win his two prequalification rounds and then knocked out Adrian Gunnell in the Last 128. His streak was ended by Judd Trump. while he was still able to win two frames. He played in three other PTC events as well, but without such a good run.

Shehzad Iqbal recently competed at the Q School events, but he lost all his three first round matches (the first one with a narrow 3:4 lose though).

Last but not least: Mohammed Yousuf won the IBSF world amateur championships in 1994, as pointed out by Finn in the comments correctly.

Singapore

Keith E Boon Aun achieved one really surprising result, that is worth mentioning here, as he beat Tony Drago 3:0 at the World Games 2005. In the next game he lost 0:3 to Gerard Greene though, who won the tournament later.

He also competed in one PIOS tournament, but lost to Ben Woollaston 0:4. 

United Arab Emirates

Mohammed Shehab was a pro player in 2005/06. He won a total of four games (vs. Liu Song twice, Stuart Pettman and Alex Borg) while he was at the tour, however wasnt able to requalify.

He also appeared at the wildcard stage of the Shanghai Masters 2008, losing to Greame Dott with only 3:5.

There are a couple of other players of the UAE, who played at single PTC tournaments, but without any impressive results.

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well thats it for asia more or less. As I pointed out before, I wont comment on Thailand and China, as there are a lot talented players, which already achived some fame, so that you can inform elsewhere easily about them.

so country up next: i dont know yet :p
but: stay tuned ;)

Focus on small Snooker-countries - Part 3: Asia A-L

While the Welsh Open are underway, I continue my little series with a focus on snooker players from Asia, aside from the "big ones" - will say: China and Thailand. Well at least its the first part for Asia. As there are a couple of countries I have to mention, we start with the letters A-L today. M-Z will follow in the next issue

Bahrain

Bahrain - in the context of snooker - is probably best known for the Bahrain Championship, which took place as a full ranking tournament in 2008. Its date collided with the Barry Hearns Premier League, so some top players were missing the tournament, because they had contracts with Matchroom for playing PL.

But this blog shall be about players and there is a notable one of Bahrain: Habib Subah played on the Main Tour in 2005/06, but without any win at all. His best performance was a narrow 4:5 loss to Nick Dyson. One year before his main tour year he was a wildcard player at the China Open, winning against Jimmy Michie 5:3, before losing to Stephen Lee at the L32 round. He also played at the already mentioned Bahrain Championship 2008 as a wildcard player and at the 2010 World Open but without any further wins. At the 2010 Asian Championship he reached the quarterfinal, before losing to Thanawat Tirapaipongboon of Thailand.

Cyprus 

Yes it belongs to Asia, at least geographically. And with Mehmet Husnu there is one name representing the colours of the island in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, that wont be forgotten for a special reason: He played the 24th professional Maximum Break in snooker history in 1998 at the qualifiers for the China International. 

While he never climbed higher than #93 in the world rankings, he also reached the final of the 2002 Benson and Hedges Championship (Masters qualifying tournament). On his road to the final he eliminated players like Ricky Walden, Mike Dunn, Gerard Greene and Nigel Bond. In the final he lost to Mark Davis 9:6. 

In the 2010 European Championships Antony Brabin of Cyprus reached the Last 16 round.

Hong Kong

Hong Kongs most successful snooker player is without any doubt Marco Fu, but he is famous enough, so I wont have to focus on him here. Grand Prix winner, #8 in the world rankings and world championship semifinalist. Enough said. 

But when we go back a little into history, we find a guy named Franky Chan, who was a successful professional at the begin of the 90s. He was ranked #42 in the world in 1992/93. Sadly I found no further details about his career, but he dropped off the Top 128 in 1995.

Maybe a little more known because of the World Cup 2011 is Fung Kwok Wai. He played together with Marco Fu, when Hong Kong reached the halffinals with a surprise win over England (represented by Mark Selby and Ali Carter) in the quarterfinals. He is a IBSF World Champiosnhip quarterfinalist in 2006 and an Asian Games winner in Team competition in 2002, followed by a silver medal in 2006 at the same event.

Beside those, there is Alan Lin Tang Ho, who played PIOS in 2007/08 and reached the Last 16 after 3 wins in PIOS #5 2007 as his best result. 

India

India is a booming snooker nation with two current main tour players. There were rumours about a ranking tournament there too, but there is no confirmation to that yet.

The two mentioned players are Lucky Vatnani and Aditya Mehta. While Vatnani had visa trouble and couldnt win a single game in 2011, Mehta already showed his talent, reaching the L48 stages at the Shanghai Masters and making his way to the quarterfinals of PTC9 in 2011, beatin players like Ryan Day, Ali Carter and Matthew Stevens in his debut season. 

Vatnani however had his first success too meanwhile, winning two games at the Welsh Open 2012 qualifiers. However he will have to leave the Main Tour probably, if he cant requalify. 

Beside those two there was Omprakash Agrawal, who was #89 for one year in 1986/87, but he fell off the Top 128 after this one year again. At the World Cup 2011 in Thailand Mehta played together with Pankaj Advani. He won the IBSF World Amateur Championships in 2003 and is a world champion in English Billards as well. He won two gold medals at the Asian Games in English Billards as well. One more name from the near history I can drop is Manan Chandra. He played on the Main Tour one year in 2002/03. Two wins at the World championship qualifiers were his highlight. He dropped off the tour after this year.

Iran

Iran's Hossein Vafaei is definatley worth mentioning as the reigning IBSF world amateur champion (narrow 10:9 win vs. Lee Walker of Wales), and therefore we should probably see him at the main tour next year. He is a very young player (born 1994) and perhaps on of the future stars of the game.

He already appeared as a Wildcard player in the Shanghai Masters 2011, where he was able to steal at least one frame for a 1:5 defeat against Fergal O'Brien.

Soheil Vahedi is another player I found. He finished forth at the World Games 2009, losing to the already mentioned Mohammed Shehab from UAE in the Match for third place. He also beat former main tour player Glen Wilkinson from Australia in the first round.

Focus on small Snooker-countries - Part 2: Finland, Norway, Iceland

Part 2 of my little series, focusing the smaller snooker nations. 

If you missed the first episode about players of Germany, you can find it here. This time I focus on northern europe countries (scandinavian would'nt be right in this context afaik)

So here we go:

Finland

Talking of Finnish snooker players, the first one that should come in mind is Robin Hull. Although born and raised in England he played for Finland and can be considered as an "extended world elite" player.

He reached the quarter finals of two ranking events (Welsh Open 2003, Malta Cup 2006), played more than 130 professional centuries and played at the crucible theatre in 2002, losing his first round to Graeme Dott 6:10 (highest break in that match for him: 91). His best world ranking was a #32 in 2003/04. He is multiple national champion and EBSA European champion of 1997 as well.

In the 2007/08 season he was unable to compete, because of a serious virus infection affecting his heart and lung (source). He fell down the rankings but requalified for the current 2011/12 season via Q School, but missed almost all tournaments of the season again. For additional information you should check his profile at Pro Snooker Blog.

Another finnish player I found while doing the research is Jyri Virtanen. He won the European Snooker Championships Masters 2006 for players above 40 years against his countryman Kimmo Lang. (source)

Other players competing at international amateur championships were Mika Karhu, Aki Suutari and Tero Suvanto, but without huge success. However, Finlands Mika Immonen is a world class poolbillard player, winning the 9-Ball world championship in 2001, and the 10-Ball wc in 2009. Moreover he represented Europe at the Mosconi Cup 14 times, being MVP twice.

Norway

Norway has a starplayer with Kurt Maflin, but just like Finlands Robin Hull, he wasnt born there. Originally from London he married Anita Rizzuti. She is a pretty good female snooker player, reaching the quarters in the World Ladies Championship 2003 and being invited as one of two ladies to the World Open 2010 to reach a total field of 128 players (she lost her first round game to Alfie Burden 0:3)

But back to Kurt Maflin: After having a promising youth career he entered the Main Tour in 2001/02 as a pretty young player. His first season wasnt pretty good with just two wins at all. Back on the tour in 2003/04, he had a better year. Highlight was a 3-game-winning-streak at the Irish Masters qualifiers (to be fair: one was a walkover), before losing in the L64 round. Nevertheless he dropped off the tour again.

He was back for the 2006/07 season, after winning the IBSF World Championship 2006. He reached the final of the Masters qualifying event (former Benson & Hedges Championship) but lost to Barry Hawkins after collecting 5 wins against Greene, Trump, Higginson, Wenbo and White. He had a good run at the China Open qualifiers as well reaching the L48 round. Sadly for him he lost the first round of the world championship qualifiers against Wales' Gareth Coppack 9:10, which caused him dropping of the tour again. 

Back on tour in 2010/11 he made a maximum break at a PTC event 1, but had only a few wins, before reaching his first L32 stage at the China Open at the end of the season. He closely lost to local Hero Ding Junhui 4:5 at the venue stage. Although he hadnt collected enough points to stay on the tour again, he immediately requalified via Q School for the 2011/12 season. He reached L16 at PTC12 and L48 at Shanghai Masters and Welsh Open and has good chances to secure his Main Tour place. 

Detailed stats about him at cuetracker, he has a profile at Pro Snooker Blog too.

Another notable player is Bjørn L'Orange, who was #176 of the world in 1994/95 according to snooker.org. He won 5 national snooker championships between 1982 and 2000 (see medal table at national championships). He was a successful pool player as well, winning the European Championship twice (1983 in Straight Pool, 1986 in 9-Ball). 

Iceland

Icelands most famous player is without doubt Kristján Helgason, who is a IBSF U21-world champion. Moreover he won the EBSA European Championship 1998 and was a finalist in 1996, 1997 and 2005.

But maybe most important: he made it to the crucible theatre once as well! In 2000 he was able to qualify, but lost his opening game against Stephen Lee 3:10, making a highest break of 65 in that game. In his professional career his higest break is a 140 played at the Regal Scottish Open 2003. In the world rankings his higest spot was a #66 in the 03/04 season.

But he is not the only player worth mentioning from Iceland. In the mid-90s there were Fjolnir Thorgeirsson and Edward Matthiasson at around #400 in the world rankings (source). Another notable name is Johannes R. Johannesson, who made it to the final of the IBSF world championship (also known as World Amateur championship) in 1994, losing 9-11 versus Mohammed Yousuf of Pakistan. The last name I can drop here is Brynjar Valdimarsson, who reached the Last 16 of the European championship 2010.

An icelandic team also won the EBSA European Team Championship in 2000, although I couldn't investigate their lineup unfortunately.

...next episode: All of Asia (except China/Thailand)

Focus on small Snooker-countries - Part 1: Germany

Hi there, and welcome! 

It's always being said, that Snooker has to become more international, and while the tournaments begin to spread around the world more and more, it will be interesting to see, if the players will too.

But if you look at the status quo, the world elite is dominated by a few countries: UK/Ireland, China, a few from Thailand, Neil Robertson of Australia and Marco Fu of Hong Kong --- maybe you can add Canada and South Africa when you look into the past too, but thats it. My idea is, that it might be interesting to make a series about the top players of the "Rest of the world", and well: here we go. 

Germany

Now that the German Masters has just finished, Germany is a perfect start for this. Moreover its my homecountry so its much easier for me to investigate the world wide web than for any other country. 

So far, there were two players from Germany on the Main Tour:

Lets start with Lasse Münstermann (born 1979), who competed at the Tour in 2000/2001 as the first German. He gained his ticket by winning at Eurotour in 2000. According to cuetracker his performances werent very well, altough he was able to beat veteran Willie Thorne at the Thailand Masters qualifiers at least.

Later he was a World Games 2005 quarterfinalist and german national champion 2006. He also competed at various PTC events in 2010/11 with wins against Adrian Gunnell and Jimmy White as highlights. He failed to requalify for the Tour via Q School in 2011, with only one win in all three events (4:0 over Alex O’Donoghue in Q School event 2).

He owns a snooker club in Ratingen (near Colonge) and can sometimes be heared as co-commentator for Eurosport Germany. According to German Wikipedia his highest tournament-break is 138. More at http://www.lassemuenstermann.de/

The second German former Main-Tour player is Patrick Einsle (born 1987). He played a total of two season in the world elite, both times qualified via Wildcard.

In 2006/07 he replaced Paul Hunter's spot, who suffered from cancer and tragically died in October 2006. His first qualifing match he had to play just three days after the announcement, that he can compete at the main tour. He won only two matches in the whole season, both in the Grand Prix group stages (vs. Joe Jogia and Alfie Burden). In the UK championship qualifiers he was whitewashed by rising star Judd Trump 9-0.

His second Main Tour season was in 2010/11, where he played a little more succesful. In PTC 3 he reached the Last 32 after winning against Jimmy Robertson and Peter Ebdon, before losing to Igor Figueiredo. According to http://patrick-einsle.de he played a 146 in competition and four Maximums in practice.

Beside those two, there is a couple of other solid German players, like Brazil-based Itaro Santos (born 1985), who played at the World Series of Snooker final tournament and is a former national champion, Sascha Lippe (born 1983), who won the European Team Championship 2007 in Belgium together with Santos and Münstermann, played PIOS-Tour for a couple of years and reached the Last 16 of the European championships in 2010 and Stefan Kasper (2010 national champion, Wildcardround German Masters 2011 - 2:5 defeat against Nigel Bond).

You can find pictures of most of the mentioned players here. A list of players, that competed on major Snooker events (PTCs/PIOS/European Championships etc.) can be found on cuetracker.

German national champions:

 
year winner            second place      third places
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2005 Itaro Santos
2006 Lasse Münstermann Itaro Santos      Sascha Lippe / Christian Gabriel
2007 Sascha Lippe      Michael Heeger    Olaf Thode / Patrick Einsle
2008 Itaro Santos      Christian Gabriel Stefan Kasper / Jörn Hannes-Hühn
2009 Patrick Einsle    Itaro Santos      Sascha Lippe / Thomas Hein
2010 Stefan Kasper     Sascha Lippe      Andreas Cieslak / Jakob Stacha
2011 Patrick Einsle    Stefan Kasper     Roman Dietzel / Sascha Lippe

...next episode: Finland, Norway, Iceland

the German Masters 2012 - roundup

programme signed by Steve Davis
(copyright World Snooker)

the German Masters 2012 - roundup

(a.k.a. tmv23 strikes again! - Day 2 of my little blog) 

Ohai, its me again. 14 people found their way to my first blog since yesterday and my fingers felt so itchy, that I made a second one.

In this post I want to collect some information I found in the world wide web about the German Masters 2012. Its a little overview for myself to remember later, but it may be interesting for other people as well, so I share it. If you have any additions, feel free to let me know :)

I also made a scan of the programme, which you can see on the right side. Sadly Chris Turner cant expand his remarkable collection anymore, so I'm not sure if you can find it anywhere else in the web except here.

Photos 

my own photos 
Day 4/5 (31 pictures)

by Monique Limbos

Day 1 (147 pictures)

Day 2 (134 pictures)

Day 3 (83 pictures)

Day 4 (82 pictures)

Day 5 (71 pictures)

by Maximum Snooker

Day 1 (16 pictures)

Day 2 (39 pictures)

Day 3 (15 pictures)

Day 4 (61 pictures)

Day 5 (87 pictures)

Pictures at Wikimedia Commons 
German Masters 2012

German press

Rolf Kalb (30.1.) - Spieler und Fans im Tempodrom gefordert

Tagesspiegel (2.2.) - Ronnie O'Sullivan: Zwischen Genie und Wahnsinn

Eurosport (2.2.) - German Masters - Williams startet Titel-Mission

Eurosport (2.2.) - German Masters - Historisch! Maguire demütigt Higgins

spox.com (4.2.) - O'Sullivan begeistert Fans beim German Masters

Die Zeit (5.2.) - Die Snooker-Elite begeistert ihre Anhänger

Eurosport (6.2.) - German Masters - O'Sullivan der neue "König von Berlin"

Rolf Kalb (6.2.) - Wow und eine Ehrenrunde

English press

BBC (1.2.) - Champion Mark Williams thrashes Ken Doherty in German Masters
Daily Mail (2.2.) - Ronnie O'Sullivan recovers to beat Andrew Higginson in Berlin

BBC (3.2.) - Ronnie O'Sullivan beats Matthew Stevens to reach German Masters semis

BBC (4.2.) - Ronnie O'Sullivan/Stephen Maguire in German Masters final

Daily/Sunday Express (4.2.) - Ronnie O'Sullivan: I'd hate to play me

The Independent (4.2.) - Snooker: O'Sullivan claims he would 'relish' life outside top 16

BBC (5.2) - German Masters: Ronnie O'Sullivan beats Stephen Maguire in final

ESPN (5.2.) - O'Sullivan edges thriller to win German Masters

The Independent (6.2.) - Snooker: O'Sullivan storms back to end barren run

The Daily Mail (6.2.) - O'Sullivan comes back to beat Maguire and land German Masters

Mirror (7.2.) - Ronnie O’Sullivan claims he’s gagged in Twitter war with snooker chiefs

The Times of Malta (7.2.) - Rocket flies again in Germany final

the German Masters 2012 - in rearview mirror

the German Masters 2012 - in rearview mirror

(a.k.a. Hello world, welcome to my first blog ever - yes, really!) 
pre-scriptum: My mother tongue is German. Dont bite me for miss takes mistakes. :)

well done, Ronnie!

I just came home from the German Masters 2012 and thought i would be a nice idea if I write some thoughts about it and throw it in the infernal abyss of data, known as the Internet. It was the second time in my life, that i saw live snooker, after the inaugural tournament in 2011. As I was there for Saturday and Sunday, so I saw both half-finals and both sessions of the final.

outside the venue

you may guessed it... inside the venue

But I dont want to waste much time about the games itself. Yes it was amazing snooker, and everyone who is interested, either saw the games or he/she knows where proper summaries can be found (I highly recommend Pro Snooker Blog, Dave Hendons Snookerscene Blog and Maximum Snooker.com, but Eurosport or British newspapers should do it as well).

What I want to focus is the organisation, the atmosphere, and, of course, showing you some photos I was able to take.

So lets start with the audience. While I can't compare it to other legendary Snooker venues, like Crucible, Wembley Conferecne Centre etc., I do can say that the atmosphere was great. Almost all people I sat near to or talked with while the weekend were not only enthusiastic, but also well-educated about the rules, the players, the tactics etc. People came from far away: e.g. I met people from Bavaria (which is ~600 km away from Berlin), from Austria (even farer), one Englishmen, and according to Rolf Kalb (Master of Ceremony and THE (!) german snooker commentator) there were even people from Chile, South America in the venue. According to the commentary there were 2500 spectators, but I didnt counted to prove. in one word: atmosphere was BRILLIANT.

Trickshots by Steve Davis

The biggest improvement of the tournament in comparison with last year was the appearance of Steve Davis, who played trickshots before both sessions of the final day (around 20 minutes before the afternoon and around 35 minutes before the evening session). While the match-snooker is much about tactics, elegance and psychology (and i really enjoy that!), he added a major entertaining component, which I enjoyed as well. And on top of that he also gave autogpahes after the match, which was a nice bonus as well. Probably we won't see him on a ranking final again, but he is not only a legend, but a PROFESSIONAL (little insider for people who were at the venue ;)

So you can argue that the slightly increased ticket prizes (I think it was ~10 Euros more expensive than last year for a dayticket) were legitimate. I guess next year it will be a little more expensive again, as there were almost no empty places in the arena. Capitalism. Supply and Demand. not hard to figure out...

Steve just signs my father's cuecase.
invisible (because behind the camera): me

I already mentioned the autographs: Ronnie wasnt there (I already kind of expected that to be honest), Stephen Maguire was there even twice (Saturday and Sunday night), moreover I grabbed signatures by Michaela Tabb, Rolf Kalb, and as said above, Steve 'The Nugget' Davis. It was a large queue waiting for them, so it took a while, but the atmosphere was calm and chilled.

What really surpsied me, was Martin Gould, who lost in the earlier rounds of the tournament, but was present almost all the time at the autograph table. Before the sessions, after the sessions, maybe even while, but I was watching snooker in that time, so I cant say.

results.

Well... what else to say? It was damn f**king cold, the Mexican restaurant around the corner was pretty good and we have to state, that Rolf Kalb is an excellent commentator for television, but announcing players like boxers is not his cup of tea. But all in all it was a great weekend, and I hope I will be back next year.

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