Saturday, October 13, 2007 Corteza to play in world pool championship By Charles Raymond A. Maxey
ANOTHER big tournament comes along, and Lee Vann Corteza of Davao City will grab every opportunity that goes with it as he seeks his first-ever major pool championship since wielding a cue stick.
The 28-year-old Corteza will have another chance at glory when he sees action in the 2007 World Pool Championships, which get underway from Nov. 3-11 at the Araneta Coliseum in Cubao, Quezon City.
Seeded in the main draw, Corteza will have dangerous Mika "Iceman" Immonen of Finland for company in Group 12, along with Chang Pe-Wei of Chinese Taipe, Tyler Edey of Canada, Jeremy Jones of USA, Karl Boyes of England, Goran Mladenovic and Fahad Mohammadi of Qatar.
Corteza, nicknamed "The Slayer" because of his penchant of beating pool top guns in almost every tournament, is the current national champion. The Davao cue artist also won the All-Japan in 2006 and recently added another feather in his cap by winning a big tournament in America.
Aside from Corteza, 10 other Filipino players spearheaded by Efren Reyes and Francisco Bustamante, RP's 1-2 punch in billiards, got automatic seeding in the main draw.
The others are defending champion Ronato Alcano, Dennis Orcollo, former winner Alex Pagulayan, Jeff de Luna, Ramil Gallego, Antonio Lining, Joven Bustamante and Rodolfo Luat.
The event, supported by San Miguel Corporation, PAGCOR and Department of Tourism (DOT), offers US$100,000 to the champion.
The format calls 16 groups of eight players playing in double elimination matches. The eight players in each group will play a total of 10 matches between them.
Two successive wins will see a player advance into the last 64 while tow straight defeats will mean eliminated from the 128-man field event.
The final set of the matches in the group will feature players with one win and one defeat with the winners advancing and losers eliminated. All matches are race-to-9, winner break format.
