Ko Pin-yi on Saturday won the World Pool Masters in England to become the first Taiwanese to win the invitational tournament title.
The 33-year-old Ko, who was the only Taiwanese at the 16-player tournament, beat Eklent Kaci of Albania 13-5 in the final at the Brentwood Centre in Essex to win the US$40,000 prize.
He celebrated by jumping onto the table before he was awarded the trophy.
Photo taken from Matchroom Pool’s Facebook page
Ko said the win was a dream come true for him and his younger brothers, Ko Ping-chung and Ko Ping-han, who are also professional pool players.
“Last year, the three of us were chatting about how we would jump onto the pool table the next time we won an international championship. However, Ko Ping-chung didn’t do it when he won the championship in the Maldives,” Ko Pin-yi wrote on Facebook yesterday, referring to his brother’s victory at the Maldives Open 10-Ball Championship last month.
“That’s okay, I’ll do it this time,” Ko Pin-yi said.
He previously reached the semi-finals at the tournament.
Ko Pin-yi said he is “truly thrilled” to win Taiwan’s first title at the World Pool Masters, and is “on track to compete in the Grand Slam of all major competitions,” toward which the Ko brothers would “keep working hard and get[ting] better.”
The World Pool Masters, first held in 1993, is “pool’s most historic invitational tournament,” the Web site Matchroom Pool says.
Hsia Hui-kai, who finished runner-up at the tournament in 2003, is the only Taiwanese player to have reached the final before Ko.
The Philadelphia 76ers, fueled by 36 points from Tyrese Maxey and a triple-double from Joel Embiid, on Thursday beat the Houston Rockets 128-122 in an NBA overtime thriller. Cameroonian big man Embiid scored 32 points, grabbed 15 rebounds and handed out 10 assists, posting the ninth triple-double of his career to help the Sixers end the Rockets’ three-game winning streak. Rockets star Kevin Durant scored 36 points and Amen Thompson added 17, but Thompson was scoreless in the fourth quarter. Even so, the Rockets led by nine midway through the final frame, Maxey tying it at 115-115 with 40.1 seconds left. Durant missed a
Tobias Harris on Monday scored 25 points as the Detroit Pistons held off the Boston Celtics to score a 104-103 victory in their top-of-the-table Eastern Conference showdown. Harris was one of four Detroit players to finish in double figures, with Jalen Duren adding 18 points and point guard Cade Cunningham scoring 16 points with 14 assists. The win sees Detroit extend their lead at the top of the Eastern Conference to 31-10, 5.5 games ahead of second-placed Boston, who fell to 26-16 with the defeat. Jaylen Brown led the Celtics scoring with 32 points and almost snatched victory in the
The Milwaukee Bucks’ Giannis Antetokounmpo on Friday said that he will probably be out for an extended period after hurting his right calf again after a similar injury caused him to miss eight games earlier this season. Antetokounmpo had his right calf wrapped in the first half of their 102-100 loss to the Denver Nuggets. He did not appear comfortable the rest of the night and left for good with 34 seconds remaining. “At the end, I could not move no more, so I had to stop playing,” Antetokounmpo said. The two-time NBA Most Valuable Player said he expected to undergo an MRI
The chaotic scenes which tarnished Sunday’s Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) final will forever overshadow a tournament that had until that point been a great success for hosts Morocco, on and off the pitch. Everything appeared set up for Walid Regragui’s Morocco side to cement their status as Africa’s preeminent footballing force as the continent’s top-ranked team made it to the final against Senegal in Rabat. Home advantage unquestionably brought extra pressure on the 2022 FIFA World Cup semi-finalists, but it also perhaps played into their hands for the controversial penalty award at the end of normal time in the
RSS