By KRISTEL SATUMBAGA
Johann Chua and Carlo Biado dumped their respective rivals on Thursday, March 13, to barge into the knockout stage of the 2025 European Open Pool Championships at the Hills Hotel Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Chua, seeking to eclipse his runner-up finish last year, asserted his might and thumped Riku Romppanen of Finland, 9-4, while Biado also dispatched United Kingdom’s Imran Majid with a similar 9-4 score.
The latest victories allowed Chua and Biado to join 62 others in the next stage, where they will play in a race-to-10 format of this $200,000 event.
Biado next clashes with German Tobias Bongers, while Chua sets up a meeting with Indonesian Edward Koyongian.
Both Bongers and Koyongian were coming off the loser’s qualification, with the German triumphing over Ernesto Gjoni of Albania, 9-4, and the latter whipping Ante Sola of Croatia, 9-5.
Except for their second-round assignments, both Chua and Biado appeared flawless, hardly breaking a sweat in their first three matches in the double-elimination preliminaries.
Prior to routing their third-round rivals, Chua first clobbered local bet Mustafa Hadzibajric, 9-1, and survived Germany’s Boris Ivanovski, 9-8, while Biado blanked Alwaleed Khaled Almudhayan of Saudi Arabia, 9-0, before outlasting Ahmed Aldulaimi of Kuwait, 9-8.
