HÀ NỘI — Việt Nam’s top cueists Trần Quyết Chiến, Nguyễn Quốc Nguyện and Mã Minh Cẩm will join the Asian team to compete in the Ceulemans Continental Cup, held from December 14 to 16 in Bordeaux, France.

This is the first time three cushions billiard world has organised the inter-continental cup to put Asia and Europe in direct competition.

The three Vietnamese cueists will team up with five top players from South Korea – Kim Haeng-jik, Choi Sung-won, Heo Jung-han, Cho Jae-ho and Kang Dong-koong – to form team Asia. Players were selected based on their positions in the UMB world ranking at the end of last year.

The Europe team includes Frederic Caudron and Eddy Merckx from Belgium, Dick Jaspers from the Netherlands, Marco Zanetti from Italy, Torbjorn Blomdahl from Sweden, Dani Sanchez from Spain, Murat Naci Coklu from Turkey and Jeremy Bury from France.

The European team is the favourite to win as they have the world’s top four cueists in Caudron, Merckx, Jaspers and Zanetti, according to UMB’s public ratings on November 18.

Asia’s top cueist, Chiến, ranks sixth in the world.

The tournament has 24 rounds with a maximum score of 25 in each round. One player from each team takes turns playing against each other in each round. When a player gets to 25 points, the teams will switch players. The first team to reach 600 points wins.  

The reward is $160,000, of which $15,000 will be given to each player in the winning team.

The Ceulemans Cup has similar rules to golf’s Ryder cup and nine-ball billiards’s Mosconi Cup. — VNS