I am not sure when I became a fan of Taiwanese players. I watched Chao Fong-Pang winning the 2000 final and listened to his interview with Mats Hsu (whom I became colleagues with later) and I saw Wu Chia-Ching reel off all those racks in 2005 and his slobbering post-victory display. I am dispassionate at best. I’d rather enjoyed seeing Alex Pagulayan leaping on the table and then asking Colette Wong for a kiss. In fact, I remember there was an incident in one of Chao’s early round matches in 2000 when his Japanese opponent accused him of sharking; he’d been in the Japanese player’s line of sight and had apparently moved just as the shot was made. Sharking, sledging, Earl Strickland type behaviour, they don’t impress me much.
But as fortune would have it, I got to know the Taiwanese contingent a lot better in my course of work this year. Running the media room for the Guinness 9 Ball Tour has opened up a brand new world for me. In fact, I got to know the Malaysian and Indonesian teams well too and through my good friend Dux, some of the Filipino players. You get to know them better when you are able to speak their language: the Taiwanese speak Mandarin and Ming-nan dialect (which is Hokkien) and Bahasa Indonesia is close enough to Malay for me to be able to translate effectively.
This is when I found out all these big stars of pool are the most unassuming, normal guys. They may be mega-stars in the pool universe but they are just the most everyday guys you can ever meet. They lead everyday lives, have everyday concerns, they worry about money and family, fret about hotel and flight arrangements which they have mostly to pay for themselves, but the difference between them and me is that they shoot a mean game of pool – consistently. At the table, they can weave magic.
Earlier, I found myself helping Kuo Po-Cheng pin his latest sponsor’s patches on his back and on his sleeve. This came right after Kuo had won a tense final 16 match against Corey Deuel to enter the final eight, the only Taiwanese player remaining in the draw. As he left the playing arena, the intrepid marketing people from World3DPoker.com approached him to ask if he would wear their branding on his shirt. It was a neat little deal, Kuo would get US$500 to wear their brand from here on in in this tournament. Initially, there was some confusion that the fee was US$500 a day, but that was quickly cleared up to be a one-off US$500 deal. BUT, should Kuo win the tournament outright, World3DPoker would pay him a US$10,000 bonus!
They paid Kuo in cash, five crisp Ben Franklins in a white envelope. I’d love to see him get 100 of those on Sunday. Anyway, I helped Kuo pin the long patch on his back and another rectangular one on his sleeve while he answered questions from the Taiwanese reporters. We’d sweated with him as he engaged in safety battles with Deuel but unlike yesterday against Chang Jung-Lin, Corey wasn’t getting the rub of the table.
Rack 17 was particularly memorable. 6-10 behind, Deuel scratched, and then amazingly scratched again. Kuo had a not impossible snooker shot to make to hide the 1 ball behind a line of 4, 5 and 9 balls. But the snooker was not well executed and Deuel in turn was able to snooker Kuo back. Kuo fouled off his next shot, unable to reach the 1 and banking in the blue 2 ball instead. Ball in hand, Deuel executed a perfect 1-9 carrom to get back a rack. It seemed then the tide has turned.
Deuel broke to stay in the match and on his first shot, he missed. It was a long shot on the 1 ball, no doubt, but it was still one he has made a million times. Not this time though, and Kuo cleaned up quickly.
For the first time in the World Championship, England has TWO players in the final eight, Daryl Peach sent Harald Stolka home 11-5. Hungarian Vilmos Foldes ended Lu Hui-Chan’s campaign by the same score. I watched Lu scratching when he was 5-6 behind and when Foldes went 8-5 up, I left for my dinner, not having the stomach, so to speak, to watch another Taiwanese fall.
Perhaps the most amazing result was the final match tonight on the Main TV Table. Roberto the Pinoy Superman Gomez blanked – BLANKED – Niels The Terminator Feijen. 11-0. Eleven zip. Read it, write it any which way, Gomez terminated The Terminator.
Tomorrow would be interesting. My good friend Takao Takayama, Japan’s No 1 cuesports blogger has decided he would be Taiwanese from now on. Call me Mr Kao San, he said. We will need all the luck we can get on our side. Kuo Po-Cheng will play Gomez at the Main TV Table, right after Peach meets Bustamante. On TV Table 2, Immonen takes on Foldes before Joven Bustamante play Boyes.
There are murmurs of discontent around the Araneta Coliseum and on the forums about the soft breaks on the Main TV Table. Yes everyone, the players have figured out quite quickly that soft breaks work best on this table since the wing balls are almost certain to go in. There has been plenty of talk about this and Rodney Morris is on the verge of starting a petition to redress the situation for future tournaments. It has not been good TV at all but it’s too late to change things. I will talk more about this tomorrow.
