Player: Pin-Yi Ko
Event: World Pool Masters
Location: Hildesheim, Germany Date: April 28, 2024



Considering the depth of the talent pool on the international stage, Matchroom Pool's 16-player World Pool Masters has to be stacked from top to bottom. In semifinals of the 2024 field, Pin-Yi Ko faced Joshua Filler, who was fresh off eliminating Ko's younger brother Ping-Chung in the previous round.

In the race-to-11, Ko dropped the first two racks to his German opponent, before he got on the board, 2-1. Breaking in the fourth game, Ko sank the 1 ball in the right pocket, though he lost a bit of control of the cue ball, which got kicked off the right long rail back up to the top left corner.

Luckily for the Taiwanese world champion, he had an angle on the 2 ball into the top right corner. But the angle was steep enough where he couldn't hold the cue ball for an easy one-rail position play on the 3. Rather, he had to send it down-table and around the other half of the table to get position for his next shot.

Any route around the table, though, was made more difficult by the 8, 9, 7, and 4 balls, all of which acted as potential blocking balls for his position play. With supreme accuracy in pocketing the 2 and controlling his angle into the long rail, Ko split the 4 and 7 balls, missing the 7 by a hair, while playing perfect three-rail position for the 3 into the same top corner pocket.

Unfortunately, this moment of brilliance wasn't enough to secure the rack. Ko rattled the 5 ball in the top left corner, letting Filler take this game for a 3-1 lead en route to a 11-8 victory. So much for Ko's plans to avenge his brother, though Filler would ultimately fall to Fedor Gorst, 13-12, in the championship set.

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