Akani, Thepchaiya advance
Former Asian U21 champion Akani “Sunny” Songsermsawad became the first Thai player to reach the knockout stages of the SangSom 6-red World Championship at the BBC Hall, CentralPlaza Lardprao as a group winner yesterday.
Thepchaiya Un-Nooh gave the Thai fans more to cheer about as he also earned a place in the last-16 round following his 5-2 victory over Iceland’s Kristjan Helgason.
Thepchaiya, Helgason, Ricky Walden and Kyren Wilson began the last day of the preliminary round with one win apiece meaning the two winners would go through to the knockout stages.
The score was 2-2 before Thepchaiya won three frames in a row, the last two on the final black.
Akani, who won the Asian U21 title two years ago, yesterday confirmed his place in the last 16 as did Stuart Bingham with both winning two of their three matches.
In his last round-robin group match, Bingham defeated Stephen Maguire 5-1 and for Akani to join him in the knockout stages the Thai had to beat Kapal Chawla of India by any score except 5-4.
Akani avoided any mishap by dropping only two frames which meant Maguire was eliminated with the Thai being group winner and Bingham runner-up.
England’s Bingham beat Scotland’s Maguire who looked to be in business when the clash began.
He got a break of 53 but that was exactly the number of points he only amassed in the next five frames and lost 5-1.
“I had all the luck going against Stephen,” smiled Bingham afterwards.
It was the end of the road for Rachapol Pu-Ob-Orm (James Wattana) despite a 5-0 victory over Iran’s Soheil Vahedi.
The former world amateur champion had lost both his previous matches against Mark Williams and Mark King who were the top two players of their group.
Atthasit Mahitthi, another former world amateur champion, gained his first victory of the week by beating two-time 6-red champion Mark Davis 5-3.
Nicknamed “Big”, the Thai had breaks of 63 and 58.
The defeat ended Davis’ hopes of a third title with the two qualifiers from this group being China’s Liang Wenbo and England’s Michael Holt.
The 10-million-baht tournament ends on Saturday.