TREVISO IN NORTHERN Italy is the final stop on the 2023 DYNAMIC BILLARD Euro Tour schedule as over 200 players gather to battle it out for the tour’s final piece of silverware. The Euro Tour first visited Treviso in 2010 and this year marks its 23rd visit to the Italian city.

With an Italian representation of 42 players, the highest ranked among them is Francesco Candela who sits at No.23. Candela’s best-ever placing on the Tour is a finish of 9th in 2021 and he will be looking to progress further in front of a home crowd this weekend.

The godfather of the Italian squad is the ever-popular Fabio Petroni who at 51 is still enjoying competitive life. The popular Roman has two Euro Tour victories to his name; firstly in 2001 when the Euro Tour went to England for the only time in its long history and again in 2006 in Malaga where he defeated Niels Feijen in the championship match.

Undoubtedly, all eyes will be on Joshua Filler who has won all three of the Euro Tour events he’s entered in 2023 including last time out in Lasko. He also won three times in 2022 and currently lies second on the rank despite only having competed in four of the six counting events in the ranking cycle.

Theoretically, there a few players in contention to finish the year at the top of the standings. Filler can’t improve on his current total of 2,200 points as he has missed too many events on the seven-tournament cycle. That leaves current No.1, Mieszko Fortunski (Poland) who can maintain his position with a strong showing this week.

2023 WPA World U19 Champion Yannick Pongers (NED) is looking to make the transition to the senior ranks. With a previous best placed finish of 9th, it seems the he is in the ascendancy and he is joined in the field by five other previous WPA Junior Champions in Moritz Neuhausen (GER), Jonas Souto of Spain and more recently Szymon Kural and Dominik Jastrzab – both Poland – and Estonia’s Karl Gnadeberg.

Play gets underway at 9.00 local time on Friday 24th November and concludes with the final at 19.00 on the evening on Monday 27th.

As well as the prize money, there are Tour ranking points on offer, so there is everything to play for. All Euro Tour tournaments are 9-ball and players compete in a double-elimination format, playing down to the last 32 competitors, and then single elimination until the finish. All matches are races to 9 racks with alternate break.

Running from Saturday 25th and concluding on Sunday 26th November at 13.00 is the final leg of the 2023 Women’s Euro Tour. With a good showing of 35 players, the race is on to see who will finish atop of the rankings at the end of the year. With No.2 ranked Eylul Kibaroglu absent this week, it appears to be a two-horse race between the German pair of Pia Filler – No.1 – and Veronika Ivanovskaia who is at No.3.

The week’s action gets underway this evening with the final of the scotch doubles Longoni 9 Ball League. The event sees two-player teams comprised of the two highest-ranked players of competing countries at the time of the matches battling through a league format leading to the final match.

The championship match is a race-to-nine and features the Netherlands – Marc Bijsterbosch and Jan Rempe against Michael Oegaard and Emil Andre Gangflot who will be flying the flag for Norway.

All the matches can be viewed live by visiting www.epbf.com/tournaments/eurotour/ and clicking on the ‘LIVE’ button. This will take you through to viewing options. In addition, selected matches will be streamed on Facebook Live on the EPBF page.

Results, live scoring, and draw are available at www.epbf.com