The lovely Portuguese city on the waterfront has traditionally been a hotspot for 3-cushion billiards. It’s a home away from home for players such as Blomdahl and Jaspers, who have both played league there for many years. Still searching for a top-10 player of their own, the Portuguese have never stopped organizing great events for the world.
From 14 – 18 July, the fourth World Cup of the season will be played in Porto. It follows Bogota (Myung Woo Cho the winner), Ho Chi Minh City (Caudron) and Ankara (again Myung Woo Cho). Clever minds have already worked out that at a pace of two World Cups per season, it would take Myung Woo Cho 21 years to catch up with Blomdahl and his legendary 46 WC wins. The Korean world number one may even try to up the pace.
The UMB has seeded the following players for Porto: Myung Woo Cho, Merckx, Jaspers, Tasdemir, Zanetti, Sidhom, Horn, B. Karakurt, T.L. Tran, Caudron, Q.C. Tran, Bury, Hofman, H.J. Kim.
The local wildcards were given to Jose Miguel Soares and Rui Manuel Costa. The AMECC/UMB wildcard went to Naser Awwad from Jordan.
The tables in Porto are Gabriels, the cloth is Simonis 330 Prestige, and the balls are Aramith Prestige. The usual ranking points are at stake: 80-54-36-26-18-10-8. Myung Woo Cho obviously leads the race for the Overall World Cup of 2026.
As only the UMB can offer, this World Cup will again have a global character, with plenty of qualifiers from Turkey, Korea, Vietnam, Colombia and a host of Western-European countries.
It’s nice to see a father-son combo in the qualifiers: Jef and Luca Philipoom. The father, world champion in 1995, is still more likely to survive a few rounds, but the son is definitely on the way up.
All matches can be watched on Soop. Full results are available on the websites of Five & Six, and the UMB.