David Alcaide takes the Kremlin World Cup Trophy…

David Alcaide takes the Kremlin World Cup Trophy…
This  year’s  Kremlin  Cup  10-Ball event featured the strongest field ever  with  10 out of 30 top WPA ranking players coming to Moscow. For the   second   year   straight  101  participants  filled  the  double elimination bracket with knock-out stage for last 32. Kremlin Cup is a WPA  sanctioned  event  and  for  the first time it appeared as one of European qualification events for the Mosconi Cup. Therefore many pros travelled to Russia chasing valuable points.
Once  again  Poland appeared with strong representation led by Mateusz Sniegocki  (World  Pool  Masters and Kremlin Cup winner back in 2012). Radoslaw  Babica  handed  defeat to one of Russian top guns Konstantin Stepanov in the round of Last 16 and Wojciech Szewczyk managed to send no other  than Shane Van Boening packing. Six Polish players advanced to single elimination but none of them finished on top four. Same goes about the Russians. None of the local players which represent a mix of skilled  experience  and young talents managed to go past the round of Last  16.  Ruslan  Chinakhov  looked  heavy  favorite to go past Petri Makkonen  of  Finland at the scoreline of 5-0 in favor of The Siberian Express.  But  the Finn capitalized on some late mistakes by Chinakhov and  produced one of the most wonderful comebacks winning the match on the hill from being 1-7 down in a race to 8.
The  Mosconi  Cup  team  USA  was  taken  to Moscow by new non-playing captain  Johan  Ruysink for an early test. It was only Skyler Woodward who  had  to  stay  at  home. (Right after Moscow event team USA faced Russian selection in ABN DreamChallenge match and for this one Sky was replaced  by Corey Deuel. In that challenge team USA was trailing 5 to
8 points in a race to 9 and managed to win 4 matches on the trot, with SVB  pulling  them  trough  without  dropping  a  single  point in his matches,  both  doubles  and singles). Every American but Billy Thorpe advanced to single elimination, The Thorpedo being sunk in last chance
round by Eklent Kaci (WPS 2nd event winner).
The  Albanian  later  managed  to  go  all  the  way  through  to  the semi-finals  where he faced Alex Kazakis. The other semi featured Nick van  den  Berg vs David Alcaide. Both the Greek and the Spaniard had a quick  work  of  their opponents. That was 6th year at the Kremlin Cup for  Kazakis  who  this  time was a defending champion. Going into the final  match  he  was  looking  forward  to  repeat the feat of Ruslan Chinakhov  and produce back-to-back wins in Moscow. But several errors made  by  Kazakis  didn’t  let  him  do  that. It was current Eurotour ranking  leader  David  Alcaide who came .  victorious at the Kremlin Cup with the scoreline of 9-6 and took the trophy to Malaga.

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