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Report
from Will Dee
UCL Top,
But the Real Winner Here Is Pool
This year’s
Fresher’s Tournament took place on the 10th October –
One of the few sunny days in the last few weeks. Instead of enjoying
this rare temperate day, thirty pool players met at the Hurricane
Pool Rooms in Kings Cross for a day playing with balls in the relative
darkness surrounding the pool tables. The thirty-strong turnout
had not been expected, due to only seven people replying to emails,
but this year turned out to be the most popular fresher’s
tournament in LSE history (and probably the best…).
The groups were
split into four groups of five and two groups of four with the top
two going through from each group. This was briefly changed later
due to the realization that this would mean there would be twelve
quarterfinalists, six semifinalists and three finalists… Great
math’s from the accounting and finance third year running
the event. After some indecision it was decided that four names
would be randomly pulled from a hat (or from under someone’s
jumper) and these players would get a bye to the quarter finals.
The groups were
randomly selected and proved mostly closely fought affairs. Group
1 was dominated by Matt Worby, Ayman Khokar and Hardeep Sandhu.
All put in great efforts to progress winning three out of four of
their matches. Unfortunately Hardeep had the worst frame difference
and had to bow out, leaving Matt Worby to qualify top because of
beating Ayman in their match. Matt was ecstatic.
Group 2 took
bloody ages! All of the games seemed to go to down to the wire,
shreading the player’s nerves. Olly Dee was the saving grace
deciding to lose most of his games 2-0 in order to speed up the
group. Evan Reeves was the man who stepped up and mostly dominated
the group leaving Will Xie and Chis Hutton to scrap it out for second
place with one game left each. Unfortunately Will was up against
Chelsea whilst Chris was taking on Scunthorpe. Chris proceeded to
the second round with a 2-0 win over Olly, whilst Will lost to Evan
after a close match.
Group 3 contained
the shark in the swimming pool – James Ashley; BUCS aficionado,
Derby County Pool Captain and black-ball machine. He duly delivered
on his reputation and won all games in the group 2-0. The rest of
the group was very close, and was eventually won by late entrant
Haipo Ying who managed to edge out the two American pool players
vying for second spot.
Sean Cox was
the surprise package of group 4, having previously boasted to have
beaten an Irishman in a pub the LSE pool club was initially dubious
as to whether this form could be recaptured. Along with David Cosgrove
the two progressed through the group after some close games. A special
mention must be made of Nikita Nikitin whose refusal to believe
these were smaller tables with smaller pockets was astonishing as
he still hit every shot with as much power as he could possibly
manage!
Groups 5 and
6 went pretty much with form as Vidur Dhingra and Yijue Lin came
first and second of group five with strong performances. Jerrold
Tan was impressive in group six, beating reigning champion and pool
captain Will Dee 2-1 to force him into second place. Jack Chong
also put in a creditable performance in this group forcing Will
to play well to progress.
So, through
to the second round of matches! The byes were drawn and initially
the first two went to Cossy and Will Dee, however considering they
were the ones doing the draw the names were hastily re-drawn, fearing
pool club retribution for match-fixing. The byes were eventually
allocated to Matt Worby, James Ashley, Haipo Ying and Yijue Lin.
The first second round match consisted of a rematch between group
six rivals Will and Jerrold. Despite some good play from Jerrold,
Will managed to scrape through and avenge his earlier loss. Elsewhere
Sean Cox took on Group 2 Champ Evan Reeves; the small balls were
still confusing the American who suffered his first loss in the
competition and said his goodbyes. In one of the other two ties
Ayman cruised past Vidur under the admiring eyes of James Foley
who later tipped him to be ‘the best player LSE has ever seen!’
Lastly David Cosgrove proved too much for Chris Hutton and sent
him packing with a 3-0 win.
The quarters
featured the players who had got byes in the previous rounds and
Haipo Ying carried on his previous form beating Yijue Lin quickly
3-0 before having to leave for an unknown reason… The biggest
surprise of the competition so far was Ayman dispatching a ‘Forced
Entry’ James Ashley in brutal fashion, taking the game to
hill-hill. James left for a bit of a cry. Despite being able to
beat Irishmen Sean Cox proved unable to beat UCL students as Cossy
won 3-2 and in the final quarter Will Dee beat Matt Worby 3-0 with
two Alvin Chan-esque ‘almost’ dishes.
Due to Haipo’s
unexpected departure one semifinal space was left open to be filled
by the best losing quarterfinalist. Unfortunately both James and
Sean lost 3-2 and had to embark on a tense one-frame shootout to
book their place in the semi’s. James won to set up a semi
against Cossy, whose semi had quickly disappeared on learning who
he was due to play. In an absolute classic Cossy managed to claw
back a 3-1 deficit to take the unexpected win 4-3! A disappointment
for James and many would think he should probably step down from
the game as now is obviously the twilight of his career… In
the corresponding semifinal Will took advantage of an emotionally
drained Ayman who after such an epic quarter against James had little
left in the tank. The game ended 4-1 although Ayman is one for the
future for sure.
So the final.
On one hand, Will Dee; last year’s Fresher’s Tournament
Champion, LSE BUCS pool first team. On the other, David Cosgrove:
Will’s housemate, brought to bring up numbers in the tournament.
The game started off well for Will with Cossy missing one of easiest
blacks in the history of pool and the next game potting the white
and black in the same shot. However this was the peak for LSE and
after some shocking shots on Will behalf and some great play by
Cossy the match was level at 4-4. The final frame was almost break-dished
with Will missing position on the final colour and allowing Cossy
to take control through some solid tactical play. Cossy finished
off the game with a couple of superb pots to make Will offer the
handshake and the £20 tournament prize money to the UCL player.
Not the best day for LSE pool but thanks to the amount of people
who turned up we should have plenty of players for the future, come
back in 3 weeks’ time to check how the LSE team do against
the UCL team in our monthly competition!
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