This tournament starts Sept 30 in Kastamonu, Turkey. The player list is available via www.umb.org. If anyone knows about live coverage, please let us know.
Mark
Mark
The tournament final was held today with Eric Daelman of Belgium defeating last year's winner Haci Arap Yaman of Turkey.
I got up at 3:30 AM to watch. In the qualifying rounds the live coverage was very good. But for the final it was execrable. I guess the TV director felt that artistic billiards needed artistic camera work. They had six or eight cameras and no camera was ever used for more than about five seconds, and then it was unlikely that the camera was showing an angle in which the whole shot could be appreciated. Most of the time they showed: closeups of the player's face, or cue butt, or the players butt; or honey shots; or the referee's back; or the trophy display.
Also the cameramen were extremely intrusive leaning over the shooter's shoulder, or putting the camera right on the rail of the table, or lining up directly in the shooter's line of sight. The reason there were so many shots of the referee's back is that he had to jump in front of the camera to judge the shot.
I watched this crap for over two hours, but finally gave up with Yaman leading 2-1 and went back to bed.
Mark