SMB Asian 9-ball ‘live’ on Star Sports

The San Miguel Asian 9-Ball Tour Manila leg unfolding tomorrow will be aired "live" on STAR Sports with eight of the world’s top 50 cue masters leading the chase for top honors in the fifth and final leg of the $250,000 circuit at the Octagon Hall of Robinson’s Galleria.

The telecast will begin at 2 p.m. tomorrow with the quarterfinal round with the next matches set at 3:30 p.m., 5 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. Replays of these games will be on June 1, 2, 3 and May 30, respectively, starting at 9:30 p.m.

The first semifinal game will be shown on Sunday, also starting at 2 p.m. with a replay on June 4 at 9:30 p.m. The other semis match will be aired at 3:30 p.m. with a replay on June 5 at 12:30 p.m.

The final will be telecast at 5 p.m. Sunday with a replay at 10:30 p.m.

Top Filipino cue masters Efren "Bata" Reyes and Francisco "Django" Bustamante and Taiwanese aces Chao Fong Pang and Hsia Hui Kai head the elite cast in the $50,000 tournament sponsored by San Miguel Beer, serving as the Asian qualifier for this year’s World Pool Championship.

The draw will be held today with the first and second rounds set to be played in the afternoon. Bustamante and Reyes are expected to lead the upper and lower brackets of the 32-player field, respectively.

Reyes is bidding to close out his stint here the way he started it–with back-to-back wins–as the 49-year-old tries to add the Manila leg to his victories in Singapore and Vietnam and just recently in Taiwan.

Those wins assured Reyes of another stint in the world tilt as he piled up a pacesetting 250 ranking points after the Taiwan stop. The top 10 players after five legs will gain berths to the world tilt set July 10-18 at the World Trade Center in Taiwan.

But the same could not be said of Bustamante, the world’s No. 1 but who is on the brink after dropping to No. 11 following a first round debacle in Taiwan.