Tuesday, January 11th, 2011
16th annual X-Mas Open in Wolfsberg
That’s an event I am waiting for the whole year.
I am always happy to go there, because of seeing some good friends there, meeting the people of Chicago Billiards and participating the X-Mas Open.
We arrived on thursday at Gasthof Stoff (http://members.aon.at/~jperusch/ ). Super nice rooms, a swimming pool, sauna, solarium and a dream of a breakfast for a price you will not believe.
After checking in we went to Chicago Billiards to participate the Thursday tournament there. During warm up we met my friends Steve Cliff (http://www.billardcorner.com/) and Ruth again.
With a little luck I won this tournament ;-)
Next day we went skiing, swimming and relaxed in the sauna.
Saturday morning I was kind of nervous, because I haven’t played a tournament for a long time. I played my first match against Albin Ouschan senior (father of Albin and Jasmin).
Wow I was super nervous and shaky. I missed some balls but after curving a thin cut the whole table down into the pocket I felt more comfortable.
After this ball I played safe and thin cut another ball in and then I thin cut the 8 Ball down the whole table…..just in front of the pocket the 8 ball made a little curve and stopped there.
So I lost this game but felt very good and won the match (5:3).
My next opponent was Christian Stadler, a strong player from Chicago Billards.
I won the lag and started to break. Don’t remember the whole match but I felt good and played stupid dangerous shots (like playing the two of the nine to get position on the three)
At 4:3 for me I warped the 1 from a difficult angel in a half blocked pocket to get position on the two, with a little help from the 8 Ball I did perfect on that shot.
I missed a position badly during this game and had to bank a ball to recover my next position. After three stun shots later I won 5:3.
Now I had plenty of time to shoot some pictures and finally met Tadej Tinev ;-)……after more then an hour I heard the announcement: Markus Hofstätter against Mario He.
That was the third time I played Mario. Mario won the lag and when I get it right the first game. He surprisely missed a ball on the second and I ran this one.
I broke and and ran the next rack. I broke dry on the next one, Mario offert me a super tough push-out and I gave it back. He curved a ball in and ran this rack.
Score was 2:2. He ran the next rack and had to play push on the next one. I gave the push back and he missed, so I finished that one. I broke again dry and he finished this rack. Score was 4:3 and for some reason I thought it was 5:3 and wanted to shake his hand.
He ran the last rack and so I it finally ended up with 5:3. I was happy with my game on this one. Just reminded me to practice my break again.
I played the next game on the same table against Mirzet Pandur. I felt very comfortable the whole match and did some nice escapes and played a good slow roll save down the whole table but I was never able to run a rack because of to many mistakes on my side. So I earned a 5:0 loss.
Was a bit strange because I felt good during the whole match….but shit happens and I finished on place 33 out of 110…..so not to bad for my first tournament after a while.
On the final day we saw some world-class matches. Mario played amazingly against Vilmos Földes and won. Later he lost against Gábor Solymosi who gave him no chance to come to the table until 5 or 6:0.
Markut Alexander played against Ercul Matjaz and after a 8:1 lead for Markut he did some mistakes and Ercul came back, but Markut won @ the end.
So the final match was Gábor Solymosi against Markut Alexander. Both player where struggling but Gábor won it.
Congratulations to all players!!!!
And thanks again to Friedl Rassi to be such a nice host for this tournament. See you guys again next year!
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