The World Pool League (WPL) was a nine ball pool tournament promoted by Matchroom Sport and PartyGaming,^[1] and sanctioned by the World Pool-Billiard Association (WPA). All of the events were held in Warsaw, Poland, annually from 1999 to 2006.^[1] Six notable players were selected to participate in each event, which lasted for three days.^[1] Despite its name, the events were invitational tournaments, not a league in the usual sporting senses. The victor in the final event was Dennis Orcollo of the Philippines, 8–5 over Niels Feijen of the Netherlands, for a US$20,000 first-place prize.^[1]

Format

Round robin stage

The players were arranged such that each on the others once, in round-robin fashion. Unlike most matches in the sport where a player has to score a required number of racks to win, players in this round play in an assigned number of racks (for example: 10 racks or 12 racks). If a player won more racks than those remaining in the match, 2 points were earned. If the match ended with two players in the same score, then both settled for a point each. The leading 4 players in the field proceeded to the semi-finals.

Semi-finals and final

The semi-finals were single-elimination (knock-out). The final was played as a race (such as race-to-nine or race-to-eight).

Winners

Year	Location	Winner	runner-up
1998	Warsaw, Poland	Jim Rempe[1]	Fabio Petroni
1999		Jim Rempe (2)	Efren Reyes
2000		Steve Knight	Francisco Bustamante
2001		Efren Reyes[1]	Steve Davis
2002		Efren Reyes (2)	Earl Strickland
2003		Rodney Morris[1]	Thorsten Hohmann
2004		Francisco Bustamante[1]	Alex Pagulayan
2005		Thorsten Hohmann[1]	Francisco Bustamante
2006		Dennis Orcollo[1]	Niels Feijen[1]

References