More Reports:

Group phase report: All of the quarter-finalists are now known - 2 from NZL, 2 from GBR and one each from AUS, HUN, SWE, USA. The European qualifying groups were particularly close. Reigning champion and no. 1 seed Simon Wright (GBR) finished 1st in E1 and will play no. 3 seed Joe Ruby (USA) who was 2nd in P1. Fast-improving Niklas Andersson (SWE) edged out Attila Mikulán (HUN) for 2nd place in E1 despite winning less games than Atilla. Some high margin wins made the difference for Niklas (who won every two-game match but despite only winning one of the two games in each case) and he will play Chris Hill (NZL), who won P1 quite convincingly.

E2 was amazingly close with one player winning 5 games, three winning 4 and one winning 3. No. 5 seed Áron H (HUN), 3rd overall last year, won E2 and will play no. 4 seed Seb M (NZL) and Dale T (GBR) will play last year's runner-up, no. 6 seed Brett Laishley (AUS) after edging out Ellouise K (GBR) for 2nd place by just 1 TP. However, the World Junior Champion as far as fair play is concerned has to be Adam Petrecz (HUN), who was offered the chance to claim a default against no. 2 seed William Brooks (GBR) after two no-shows which would have put him 1st in the group but very sportingly persevered in trying to get the game played to be fair to the other players in the group, only to lose the game and end up in 5th place - that is how close the group was!

QF & SF report: No. 1 seed Simon Wright (GBR) continued to defend his title in style in the first semi-final, winning the last 5 games against no. 6 seed Brett Laishley (AUS) in a rematch of last year's Final, winning even more emphatically this time by 83.1-36.9 TPs. Simon's QF against no. 3 seed Joe Ruby (USA) had gone right to the wire - Joe actually led by 40.5-39.5 TPs before Simon won the last game. Brett had had a much easier QF, thrashing unseeded Dale T (GBR) by 5 games to 0.

Unseeded dark horse Chris Hill (NZL) despatched no. 5 seed Áron H (HUN) fairly easily, in his SF to continue an amazing run that has seen him sweep all before him. In the QFs, Chris had put an abrupt end to the challenge of Niklas Andersson (SWE) by winning all five games while Áron had beaten no. 4 seed Seb M (NZL) in a much closer match.

In complete contrast to last year when the group runners-up both beat the group winners in the KO phase, this year the group winners each managed to win their QFs and (even more unusually for a Tantrix tournament), the top three in last year's WJTC all reached the SFs once again!

The date and time are :

Wednesday, 14-May-2008 06:04:55 GMT
Wednesday, 14-May-2008 07:04:55 BST (local)

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