Defending champion Carlo Biado and Jeffrey De Luna blasted their rivals on Saturday to advance to the knockout round-of-64 stage in the 2018 WPA World 9-Ball Championship in Doha, Qatar.
Fresh from a quick 9-3 victory over Argentina’s Llanos Jorge in Friday’s group stage opening, the 35-year-old Biado whipped Sergey Lutsker of Russia, 9-5, while De Luna, a 2006 Doha Asian Games silver medalist, downed Radoslaw Babica of Poland, 9-6.
He earlier beat Turkey’s Sam Koylu, 9-7.
All 128 players are grouped into four for the preliminary group stage, where they need to win two matches in order to make it to the 64-round knockout round.
Jeffrey Ignacio failed to capitalize his opening-match win and lost to Mateusz Sniegocki of Poland, 9-5, needing to win one more to earn as spot in the next round.
Marlon Manalo, Johann Chua Gonzales and Roland Garcia also breathed life in their bids to make up for their first matches by besting their rivals.
Manalo dumped Ali Abdulhadi of host Qatar, 9-2; Gonzales crushed Wojciech Szewczyk of Poland, 9-3, and Garcia thumped Ahmed Nizam Uddin of Bangladesh, 9-5.
Making an exit after losing their second straight match were Roberto Brillantes, who bowed to Aung Moe Thu of Myanmar, 9-3, and Israel Rota, who succumbed to Chinese Taipei’s Chang Yu Lung, 9-5.
Chinese Taipei posted the most number of qualifiers so far with seven that in clude 2015 world 9-ball champion Ko Pin Yi prevailing over Czech Republics, Roman Hyber, 9-4. (Kristel Satumbaga)
