The Ultimate Team Event

L

LastTwo

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
You know what I would like to see, is a Mosconi Cup with all countries that have a large pool-playing populations to compete in it. I think that would be much more exciting, and more rewarding to win, if you had like 10 or 20 different teams of 6-10 top players. Don't you think this would be the greatest pool event in the world? Here are my picks-

USA
Johnny Archer
Buddy Hall
Earl Strickland
Rodney Morris
Gabe Owen
Max Eberle
Nick Varner
John Schmidt
Corey Deuel
Jeremy Jones

Europe
Mika Immonen
Ralf Souqet
Oliver Ortmann
Thorsten Hohmann
Imran Majid
Tony Drago
Fabio Petoni
Steve Davis
Nick Vandenberg
Neils Feijen

Phillipines
Efren Reyes
Jose Parica
Alex Pagulayan
Francisco Bustamante
Santos Sambajon
Marlon Manalo
Rodolfo Luat
Antonio Lining
(first name?)Gabica
...
...

Taiwan
Fong Pang Chao
Ching Shun Yang
Hsia
...
...
...
...

Japan
Kunihiko Takahashi
Toshikawa
...
...
...

S. Korea
Shin Young Park
Yeong Hwa Jeong
...
...
...

Mexico
Ernesto Dominguez
Ismael Paez
...
...
...

Canada
Paul Potier
Stan Tourengau
...
...
...
 
LastTwo said:
You know what I would like to see, is a Mosconi Cup with all countries that have a large pool-playing populations to compete in it. I think that would be much more exciting, and more rewarding to win, if you had like 10 or 20 different teams of 6-10 top players. Don't you think this would be the greatest pool event in the world?
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It would absolutely be a great event, as are many 'World Cups' or 'World Championships'. I was living in Toronto in the 80s when Italy won the World Cup of soccer, something like 600,000 Italian supporters partied on Yonge St that night ! As the suggested team list shows, many countries are now capable of fielding competetive teams, so it would be a good time for such an event (I'm not sure about 100 years ago, 50 years ago, etc). The clash of cultures makes interesting competition !

I'd suggest much smaller teams, perhaps 2 or 4. It would be more equitable for smaller nations and those just developing a pool culture. The depth of talent in some of the top countries is just much to overcome when the team size is larger. I assume the original suggestion was for a 9 Ball contest, but image national teams of 20 snooker players, could anyone beat the UK ? But if the team was 2 snooker players, that's a horse of a different colour !

However in pool, the greatest event should, IMO, be the individual World Championships as pool is ultimately a head-to-head competition. Another great thing about pool is that we can have so many World Champions ... 8Ball, 9Ball, 14.1, Snooker, 3C, 1P, etc., etc.... :D

Dave
 
Last edited:
i think we'd have to include thomas engert with the european team. maybe we can ease out, say, imran majid or nick van den berg.

for the philippines, (btw, gabica's first name is gaga, i think. or is that his nickname?) maybe we can add orcullo and maybe villanueva.

for taiwan, they have lots! i cant even begin to name them all. but maybe we can start with the two boys (who're what? 15 yrs old???)
 
a "world cup of pocket billiards" would be great. email your idea to matchroom, i'm sure they thought of something like this, but it never hurts to send them your idea's.


p.s. you picked max eberle over tony robles or charlie williams???? LOL
 
vapoolplayer said:
a "world cup of pocket billiards" would be great. email your idea to matchroom, i'm sure they thought of something like this, but it never hurts to send them your idea's.


p.s. you picked max eberle over tony robles or charlie williams???? LOL
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Tony and Charlie are both great players, and I've witnessed their top games. I was more impressed with Max's top speed.
 
LastTwo said:
Tony and Charlie are both great players, and I've witnessed their top games. I was more impressed with Max's top speed.
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i've never seen max play in person, is he playing much in the major tournaments anymore or just hanging around the west coast?
 
LastTwo said:
Tony and Charlie are both great players, and I've witnessed their top games. I was more impressed with Max's top speed.
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A player's top speed doesn't define his game.

There's little question that the two premier nine ball events played in the USA are the BCA Open and the US Open. In 2004, Robles won the BCA Open and came ninth in the US Open. Enough said.

Max is a very fine player and one hell of a nice guy, but he's yet to prove his pedigree by performing well in the premier events having the toughest fields. I'm a Max Eberle fan, so I'm hoping he'll make his big statement soon.
 
Yeah, and how come the US plays against all of Europe? Shouldn't it be North America vs. Europe? I like the idea of an international competition between all the countries. Maybe we could end the wars and stuff. Just play pool to decide who gets their way.
 
bsmutz said:
Yeah, and how come the US plays against all of Europe? Shouldn't it be North America vs. Europe? I like the idea of an international competition between all the countries. Maybe we could end the wars and stuff. Just play pool to decide who gets their way.
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You know, that's an even better idea- A team Olympics of pool, all major pool countries competing. An even this big, I don't think there would be a problem of making 1st prize a decent amount of money.
 
Yes, a world team cup would be a dream for me to see. Divided into countries and not continents though. Four man teams with a few singles and scotch doubles. Would be awsome!

...well thats my dream anyway :-)

I also would love to see a high value allround world championship with pool, snooker and 3cushion.
 
If you divide the European team down to country-specific teams, I'm guessing many countries wouldn't have enough top-calibre players to compete with countries like the Philliphines, Taiwan, US, Japan. I can only think of Germany and the Nederlands that can field more than 4 international calibre 9 ball players. Findland and Sweden come close, but fall just short. The UK have the best snooker players and some very good pool players; but the gap between their best (maybe 2? Davis and Imran or Knight) and their 2nd-tier players is quite substantial.
 
bsmutz said:
Yeah, and how come the US plays against all of Europe? Shouldn't it be North America vs. Europe? I like the idea of an international competition between all the countries. Maybe we could end the wars and stuff. Just play pool to decide who gets their way.
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It should be North America vs Europe vs Asia. 3 teams. It cuts out South America and Africa from the comp but from what I know those places dont play much pool.

As for the original post, if you are going by country then Europe is NOT a country and would not be a team, you make south Korea and Canada go it alone and make Europe one team?

Plus your Canada picks man....

Canada:
Potier
Horsefall
Edey
Montal
Salvas
Hjorfelsen
Hewitt
Vidas
Gollan
Kennedy

That there is not bad, it would take a tough team to go with that 10 man team, and it is younger then the American team by alot too. That does not even include Alex who is from what I gather going to be a dual citizen.
 
Why not do a team world cup and structure it similar to the European team championships. Each country yields a team of five players and competes against other countries in 9ball, 8ball, and straight pool. Playing a variety of games would determine the best pool playing nation and not the best 9ball nation, oh and scotch doubles would be an absolute must. Each team faces another team in double elimination brackets and the last nation standing gets braggin rights for a year.
 
sniper said:
Why not do a team world cup and structure it similar to the European team championships. Each country yields a team of five players and competes against other countries in 9ball, 8ball, and straight pool.
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A team world cup sounds great to me, but I think it might be better if done in a format comparable to Davis Cup tennis, where nations square off two at a time on the home soil of one of the two teams competing. In tennis, this has ensured great fanfare for the Davis Cup. For example, the quarterfinals might look like this:

Japan vs USA
Canada vs Chinese Taipei
Korea vs Philipines
Netherlands vs Gerrnany

The winners of these four team matches would advance to the semifinals, and so on. Of course , none of this is happening unless somebody pays the expenses of all participants and puts up meaninful prize money, with at least 100,000 to the winning team.
 
I like your idea SJM but it could be improved, first off we both know the players can't afford to make several international trips and we both know that no one would anti up the money for these trips. So scratch the home turf idea and have the whole event staged in one location and have it alternate contintents from North America to Europe to Asia.

Also, you only had eight nations listed :confused: There are alot more than eight nations that could produce five top calibre players so why not invite sixteen, you didn't even include the UK/England. Prize money wouldn't necessarily be needed, the European team championships are only for glory and respect yet each nation always yields its five best year in and year out and alot of the players travel a long ways just for that event.

Hopefully this materializes in the next 5-10 years because pool could sure use something like this and the Continental Team Cup doesn't just cut it (poor marketing and promotion)
 
sniper said:
There are alot more than eight nations that could produce five top calibre players...you didn't even include the UK/England...
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Sniper, I'm inclined to disagree. By the way, I was born in England, so, if anything, I'd have a bias in favor of including the UK. Still, although the standard of play in England has been on the rise and the emergence of England as one of the best pool-playing nations looks inevitable, I don't feel that the English players have shown themselves to be among the best. Tony Crosby is certainly the one guy for whom you could make a case. He's a fine player, although he's an American citizen now. You could easily find fifty American players that would love to gamble playing even with Darryl Peach and Raj Hundal, whom I believe to be the two best nine-ballers living in the UK. When the English players start having top five finshes in premier events having deep international fields such as the WPC, BCA Open, US Open or Derby City, I'll reconsider my point of view.
 
sniper said:
Why not do a team world cup and structure it similar to the European team championships. Each country yields a team of five players and competes against other countries in 9ball, 8ball, and straight pool.
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How 'bout we add snooker to the mix ? That way we Canadians would have a slightly better chance, as would the Brits :)

Another argument for small (2-4) teams is that even a powerhouse like the US, Philipines, or RoC could have a couple of players having an off day. The odds of 6 of 10 having off days and loosing is smaller. Small teams will partially negate the great depth advantage the major pool playing countries enjoy.

Dave
 
sjm, your right that the UK is certainly on the rise with players like Imran Majid and Kevin Hew (to name a couple), not to mention the WPBA has been dominated by the UK women for quite some time. I was just using the UK for reference as to why such an event would be better with sixteen teams instead of eight.

I wouldn't mind seeing snooker included but no one would stand a chance against the UK.
 
I still think Europe should go as a whole, and that is why I said up to 10 man teams.

OR we could do much smaller teams, like 5 man teams and have each and every country represented, including all the countries in Europe.
 
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