[Late Post] Orcollo beats Mika Immonen to win 2011 Predator International 10-Ball Championship

Source : Sid Ventura YAhoo Philippines

Dennis Orcollo showed why he is the world's top-ranked pool player, completing a remarkable tournament run with a tense 10-8 win over Mika Immonen to capture the 11^th Predator International 10-Ball Championship at the Robinsons Galleria last night.

Displaying nerves of steel, Orcollo swept the last three racks with remarkable shotmaking as the normally unflappable Immonen made some crucial errors down the stretch that shifted the momentum of the match.
The Finn got off to a hot start, winning four racks in a row to seize a 5-2 lead. He let Orcollo back into the game, though, by missing a tough shot on the 7 in the eighth rack, which the Filipino parlayed into a two-rack run that cut the lead to 5-4. A poor safety shot by Orcollo in the 10^th, however, prevented him from knotting up the score, and Immonen seized the rack to go up 6-4.
Another error by Immonen, this time a miss on the 1, gave Orcollo another opening, and he took full advantage by winning the rack as well as the next to knot it up at 6-6. But Immonen inched ahead again at 7-6 after Orcollo came up dry with his break in the 13^th rack. Then things started going south for the Finn.
The Iceman has been in a slump of late, failing to win any title of sort for the last five months or so. Now he was three racks away from victory and breaking to go ahead 8-6. He had a good break in the 14^th rack and seemed to have a clear path to the 10 ball and a decisive two-rack advantage in the homestretch. But he shunned the use of a bridge in an attempt to hit a difficultly placed 4 ball, choosing instead to stretch across the table. He missed badly, and Orcollo made him pay by tying it up at 7-7.
Immonen came back to win the 15^th rack after Orcollo missed a bank on the 4, but Orcollo tied it up again in the next rack. The 17^th rack was messy, with both players committing errors. Immonen nearly stole the rack with a kick-in on the 7 that just rattled out, but Orcollo left the door slightly ajar when he didn't completely cover up the 8. Immonen had a chance at a safety, but he virtually handed over the rack to the world no. 1 when he scratched.
Orcollo sank the 3 on his break in the 18^th rack, but he had to sink a couple of tricky shots before he could complete a run-out and clinch the title, his second with Predator after winning this same event in 2009, and the $10,000 champion's purse. Immonen settled for the runner-up prize of $6,000.
The player known as Robocop actually got off to a rocky start in the tournament, losing his opening match to Yukio Akagariyama, 9-3. But he bounced back with quality wins over his next five opponents, including a relatively easy 10-5 semifinal victory over a red-hot Wu Jia Qing.
"It's a great tournament, really hard," Orcollo said. "First day I lost to Akagariyama. I went to the loser's bracket. But I didn't worry."
In contrast, Immonen had to go through three hill-hill matches to reach the finals, including a tight 10-9 win over Liu Haitao in the semifinals. His luck finally ran out in the finals, although it was still his best result in recent months.
"I was really close to ending this drought that I've had for the past four or five months," he said. "I thought I'd end it with this event. I was up by two racks, but I made a couple of unforced errors. Maybe I got ahead of myself a little bit."
For Orcollo, this latest tournament win, which came off a runner-up finish in the World Pool Masters, firmly established him as the top player in the world, even though the Predator event carries no World Pool Association (WPA) ranking points. Orcollo also made it to the semifinals of the World 9 Ball Championships in Doha in June and the quarterfinals of the World 10 Ball Championships in Pasay City in May.