How did the champions end up in the relegation zone? Veterans who have won championships on the Professional Billiards (PBA) tour will play a survival game to remain in the first division.
PBA will hold ‘2023 PBA Q-School’ and ‘2023 LPBA Tryout’ at PBC Carom Club in Ilsan, Goyang-si, Gyeonggi-do from the 7th to the 13th. It is a gateway to selecting male and female players who will be active in the first part tour of the upcoming 2023-2024 season.
Q School is the final gateway to qualifying for the first part tour ahead of the new season. For players who were relegated from the first division last season, this is the last chance to remain on the first division tour.
In particular, former PBA Tour champions who are in danger of relegation stand out. They are Kim Byeong-ho (Hana Card) and Seo Hyun-min (Welcome Savings Bank).
Kim Byung-ho won the 2019-2020 season ‘Welcome Savings Bank Wellbang PBA Championship’ as a surprise. Kim Byung-ho, who was also famous as the father of Kim Bo-mi (NH Nonghyup Card) in the women’s division, defeated Belgian champion Frederic Kudron (Welcome Savings Bank) in the semifinals and defeated Spain’s David Martinez (Crown Haitai) in the final. After her victory, Bo-mi Kim moved her tears by congratulating her father on the victory, who had devotedly supported her.
Seo Hyun-min also won an emotional victory. In the 2020-2021 season, he reached the top at the ‘NH Nonghyup Card Championship’, and Seo Hyun-min, who ran a billiard room at the time, gave strength to billiard hall owners across the country who were struggling with business due to Corona 19. In his impressions of winning the championship, Seo Hyun-min said, “I think I will be able to repay some of the loans I took to open a billiard room with the prize money.”
However, they haven’t been able to achieve anything significant since then. In the team league, the team entered the postseason, but stayed in the bottom ranks in the individual tour. Kim Byeong-ho and Seo Hyun-min stayed at 83rd and 84th in the final rankings, and had to pass Q-School.
Same goes for Eom Sang-pil (Blue One Resort). Although he has not won an individual tour, Um Sang-pil led the team to the top in the team league last season as the captain of Blue One Resort. However, the individual tour stays in 77th place, so you have to go through Q school to remain in the first part.
Including them, 55 players who were demoted after failing to rank 64th, 50% of the total, in the first part of the tour last season, 16th to 64th (49 players) on the Dream Tour (Part 2), and 4th to 32nd (29 players) on the Challenge Tour (Part 3) ) and 140 participants. Only about 30 of them are promoted to division 1, and the competition rate is 4.6:1.스포츠토토
Q School is divided into round 1 from the 7th to 9th, and round 2 from the 11th to 13th. In the first round, the top players of the Dream Tour and Challenge Tour play through a tournament (35 points system), and the finalists of the second round are selected through a three-day tournament. The passers-by in the first round compete with the first division relegated players in the second round to determine the finalists of the first division.
On the 10th, the period of Q School, the ‘LPBA Tryout’, a selection of new female players, will be held. It is held in a group league (one group of three, 20 points system), and the final selection number is announced after the PBA Game Management Committee evaluation according to the performance.