Taiwan’s top female pool stars are seeking to keep the trophy at home when the Amway eSpring International Women’s Nine-Ball Championships begin today in Taipei.
Formerly known as the Amway Cup, organizers and sponsors of the tournament have set up an exhibition and invited special guests to celebrate the event’s 20-year anniversary.
It is among the top events in the women’s circuit and is sanctioned by the World Pool-Billiard Assocation (WPA),
the international governing body of pocket-billiard sports, as well as the Asian Pocket Billiard Union.
Most of the world’s top-ranked female players, along with several former tournament winners, are to play at the event, organizers said at a news conference.
The competitors are divided into eight groups for the round-robin stage and the games follow WPA nine-ball rules and the “three-ball break” rule.
The finals are to be played on Sunday.
The event is cohosted by the Taipei Department of Sports and the Chinese Taipei Billiards Association, with all games to be played at the Taipei Gymnasium next to the Taipei Arena.
British star Allison Fisher, a former World No. 1, won the inaugural Amway Cup in 1998 and is the most successful player at this year’s event, winning the title five times.
“It brought back many wonderful memories to see this special retrospective exhibition, for those early years when I won the championship a few times, and helped to build upon that success,” Fisher said, “I was just starting my career at the time, and it was a great experience coming to Taiwan to play in front of a new audience.”
“I love playing in this tournament. I like the format and the way it is organized, and also can meet people from many different cultures,” she said.
“We have made good friends with other players, even though we are competitors at the games,” she said.
Taiwan is represented by Chou Chieh-yu, who won the title in 2009 and 2012; Lin Yuan-chun, who won the title in 2008 and 2015; and 2004 winner Liu Shin-mei.
Taiwan won a back-and-forth match at the Unions Cup in Singapore yesterday, but the hosts claimed the trophy due to a better points differential over the tournament. Singapore’s players celebrated with the cup, despite losing a match in which they seized the lead three times, but ultimately fell to a 19-16 defeat. Their points advantage was due to their strong opening game against the other team in the competition, Thailand, who they beat 30-8 on Saturday last week. Taiwan narrowly lost to Thailand on Tuesday and went into yesterday’s match facing a steep challenge. They responded well, opening the game with sustained pressure
A buzz of excitement crackled through the hushed arena as the rider gripped the reins of her stuffed steed. Welcome to the strangely exacting world of hobby-horsing, the Finnish sport guaranteed to put a smile on your face. Immaculately coiffed equestrians leap athletically over fences just like in horse jumping, going as fast as they can against the clock straddling their stick steeds. Things are more stately in the dressage, with riders trotting their stick horses with intricately decorated stuffed heads before the discerning eyes of the judges. About 260 riders from 22 countries — most women and girls aged 10 to 20 —
Taiwan’s men’s national basketball team is set to upgrade its depth in the paint after signing Brandon Gilbeck of the P.League+’s Formosa Dreamers to a naturalized player’s contract. The 27-year-old big man from the US landed in Taoyuan early on Monday, where he was welcomed by Chinese Taipei Basketball Association deputy secretary-general Chang Cheng-chung. The two signed the deal, which still has to be approved by the Sports Administration and the Ministry of the Interior. Chang said he is confident that “the proceedings would go smoothly.” If approved, Gilbeck would become the third naturalized basketball player in Taiwan, following the New Taipei Kings’ Quincy
Luka Doncic fouled an opponent to try to get the ball back with Slovenia up by 27 points in the final seconds. Goga Bitadze tried to ensure that Georgia — his own team — would not win in regulation by attempting to score in an opponent’s basket as time was expiring. On the other hand, the Philippines, down by three as time was running out in its game, had no interest in trying to win. And here is the thing: All those plays made a lot of sense. Tiebreaker scenarios in the Olympic qualifying tournament games on Thursday led to some rather