Former WPA World Number 1, Dennis Orcollo of the Philippines has won the 2010 World Pool Masters in Las Vegas.

The Filipino star defeated relatively unknown Japanese player Toru Kuribayashi 8-3 in the final.

This has been touted as the toughest ever Masters due to a huge change in the format of the event. Instead of the traditional 16 invited players this years tournament was opened up to all-comers through a series of International qualification events. Over 750 players tried their luck at qualifying for one of the most prestigious pool tournaments on the global calendar.

The first stage of the event saw players compete in double elimination groups of eight players. From this the field of 64 was whittled down to 32 players for the single elimination phase. One more win was required in order to get into the televised stages.

Jayson Shaw of Scotland, seen regularly on the UK tour, made his way into the Last 64 before losing to Roberto Gomez. One of the UK’s invites, 2007 World Champion Daryl Peach, was also eliminated in the Last 16 stage to the aforementioned Japanese youngster. Kuribayashi beat Peach by an astonishing 8-0 scoreline in front of the cameras and packed arena in Vegas.

Defending champion Darren Appleton battled his way through the group stage but came unstuck against resurgent German Oliver Ortmann.

On his run to the final Orcollo beat Marcus Chamat, Raj Hundal the 2006 champion, John Morra and Roberto Gomez before setting up the tie with Kuribayashi.

The win will delight both Orcollo and fans in the Philippines as it takes a major international trophy back to Asia. Recently the major events have been dominated by European based players so it was good to see that other continents can still perform at the highest level.

You can watch the World Pool Masters on Sky Sports in the UK later in the year, it is packaged up into 15 x 1 hour programmes.

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