Report by David Knight www.pro9.co.uk

Nick van den Berg had one of those days where everything seemed easy, great breaks, unmissable potting, and the confidence of a champion – producing some epic matches with one-sided results in his favour, and a couple of matches that went to the hill – on Saturday Imran Majid took him all the way, and today it was Raj Hundal’s turn to test the man from the Netherlands.  Despite these oh-so-close single elimination matches going to the wire, van den Berg’s game grew and grew as the final approached, resulting in a penultimate drubbing of his fellow countryman Niels Jeijen 9/3 in the Semi-finals, and a solid 11/8 victory in the Final against a tricky customer by the name of Tony Drago.

The more intensely you study the player list, the more familiar names you notice – a very popular event with players from these shores, and it’s not just the usual big guns who have made the trip to Paris this weekend.  A tribute to the organisers, David Bare and Gael Yard, who invited players to attend the brilliant Paris Open at the elegant Cercle Clichy Montmartre.  Despite no celebrity players receiving free invitations this year, there were plenty in attendance – all vying for a share of the 18,000 euro + prize fund on offer.

Surprising results were plentiful, as last year’s winner of this event, home favourite Vince Facquet was knocked out comparatively early in the Last 16 stage by Greece’s Nikos Oikonomopoulos, and New zealand’s Matthew Edwards has cut a swathe through the best of the field into the Semi-Finals only to be stopped by the speedy play of the other finalist – Malta’s Tony Drago.