Champ top seed in World Pool; Bata 2nd

Defending world pool champion Wu Chia-ching of Chinese Taipei has been seeded No. 1 in the 2006 World Pool Championship slated Nov. 4-12 in Manila, according to Matchroom Sports, lead promoter of the tournament.

Efren "Bata" Reyes, whose stirring victory in 1999 in Cardiff, Wales helped raise the sport to the level of a major league, is ranked No. 2 followed by Thorsten Hohmann of Germany, champion in 2003, and Alex Pagulayan, the Canada-based Filipino, who romped away with the crown in 2004 in Taiwan.

Four other Filipino players made it to the top 32, including Marlon Manalo (5), Francisco "Django" Bustamante (10), Dennis Orcollo (16), and Jose Parica (23).

Chinese Taipei, Germany and the United States have five players each in the official ranking.

The seedings are important since each of the 32 seeded players will head a group in the elimination round of the event. They will not meet until the knockout stages of the tournament. Full listing of the members of each group will be released tomorrow.

The other seeded players are Kuo Po-cheng of Chinese Taipei (6), Ralf Souquet of Germany (7), Johnny Archer of the US (8), Germany’s Thomas Engert (9), Mika Immonen of Finland (11), American Rodney Morris (12), Swede Marcus Chamat (13), Yang Ching-shun of Chinese Taipei (14), Dutch Nick van den Berg (15), American Earl Strickland (17), Niels Feijen of the Netherlands (18), Taiwan’s Chao Fong-pang (19), England’s Imran Majid (20);

German Oliver Ortmann (21), American Corey Deuel (22), Jeremy Jones of the US (24), Dutch Alex Lely (25), Chang Pei-wei of Chinese Taipei (26), Hungary’s Vilmos Foldes (27), German Christian Reimering (28), Kunihiko Takahashi of Japan (29), Italian Fabio Petroni (30), Finland’s Markus Juva (31) and Daryl Peach of England (32).

Meanwhile, Bustamante opens his title-retention bid against unfancied John Salazar at the start of the P1.35 million Philippine 9-ball Open at the Casino Pagcor Theater in Parañaque City.

The power-breaking Bustamante, who beat Orcollo in last year’s finale, is eyeing a second straight title romp here after successfully defending his crown in the Bali Open in Indonesia recently.

Unlike in Bali, however, the former world No. 1, who teamed up with Reyes to win the inaugural World Cup crown in Wales, said things would be a lot different here.