First Czech success after 15 years.
The Czech players are celebrating a success they have been waiting for since 2008. Petr Urban of the Maple club from Pardubice won the Dynamic Billard Best of the East tournament. He is the second Czech player in the history of the series to win the gold medal, after Michal Gavenciak, who landed on the top of the podium in 2004,2006 and 2008.
“I have competed in the Dynamic Best series many times, but haven’t won any tournament until now. Twice I made it to the finals, but the opponents were better. Now I have finally done it,” says Petr.
In the finals, Urban won against Dominik Jastrząb (POL) 7:2.
The bronze medals went to Szymon Duda (POL) and Krystian Piekarski (POL). The former lost 1:7 to P. Urban in the semi-finals, while the latter lost 0:7 to D. Jastrząb in the game match of the tournament, which lasted about 20 minutes.
The other two places on the podium were somewhat unexpected. Duda and Piekarski were not counted among the favourites of the event.
The tournament in Pardubice attracted 57 players from 11 countries (POL, SVK, CZE, ENG, GER, SER, CRO, HUN, UKR, ESP, MAC). There were more applicants on the list, but for health or professional reasons, they cancelled their participation just before the event.
In the first stage, 16 groups competed against one another, with the top two from each advancing to Sunday’s play-off round. The biggest surprise at this stage was the 5:3 victory of Senica junior Timothei Furko (SVK) in a game against A. Stankiewicz (POL). Unfortunately, he was several points short to advance to the next round.
Other players who dropped out at this stage were: L. Hajshman (CZE), N. Rudenko (UKR) and M. Marijc (CRO).
The top 16 included: 11 Poles, 3 Czechs, 1 Hungarian and 1 Slovakian. In the quarter-final, there were only Poles and Czechs, as A. Habo (HUN) lost 6:7 to H. Lopotko, and Koles Balazs (SVK) lost 1:7 to D. Jastrząb =. A sensational game was played by the ranking leader Szymon Kural (POL), who won all his games in the group 5:0. In the play-off stage he won 7:1 against J. Zbozil (CZE) and 7:1 against W. Głąb (POL). However, he lost to Szymon Duda 6:7. The semi-finals ended with the same result between H. Lopotko against D. Jastrząb, as well as K. Piekarski against D. Hare. The game between the Czech players, Urban and Zalman, ended with 7:5.
A more even game was expected in the finals. When Dominik started to make mistakes, Petr’s confidence grew and he reached for the gold.
After pocketing the last ball, he could not hide his joy, as did the club’s managers Jaroslav Horenovsky and Jaroslav Javurek. No wonder. They have been travelling with Maple players to the Dynamic Best of the East tournaments for years and this was their first success in a long while.
The tournament in Pardubice closed the 2023 season. The sponsors of the tournament were: Dynamic Billard Organisation from Germany, Iwan Simonis S.A. from Belgium, Saluc S.A. (Aramith) from Belgium, Cuetec, Kamui and Dominus Cues. The hosts of this year’s edition of the tournament were Marcin Krzeminski- President of the EEBC and Jaroslav Horenovsky – Vice President of the EEBC.