Biado, Centeno and Amit suffer last 16 defeats in their respected tourneys

IN ALL sports, including billiards, you win some and lose some.

It happened on Tuesday on world champions Carlo Biado, Chezka Centeno and Rubilen Amit, who each suffered painful defeats in their respective tournaments both coincidentally staged in St. Louis, Missouri and fell short of adding more titles to their massive collections.

Mr. Biado, a two-time world nine-ball king, a 10-ball titlist, a US Open winner and a World and Southeast Asian Games gold medalist, ousted Dutch Marco Teutscher, 10-7, in the round-of-16 but succumbed to unattached Wiktor Zieliński, 10-8, in the quarterfinals to crash out in the WPA Men’s 8-Ball World Championship title hunt.

The defeat was especially painful for Mr. Biado, who was hoping to seize the only world crown that has eluded him — 8-ball.

Ms. Centeno suffered the same fate in the Seybert’s Women’s Open Last-16 with stinging defeats to Japanese Chihiro Kawahara, 4-3, 1-4, 4-2, and Austrian legend Jasmin Ouschan, 4-1, 3-4, 4-1, respectively.

Like Mr. Biado, Ms. Centeno and Ms. Amit were decorated pool players themselves with the former being a two-time world 10-ball queen and Ms. Amit a two-time world 10-ball champion and one-time world nine-ball winner.

But as in every discipline, even the best falls down sometimes.

And the Philippine troika was just no exception. — Joey Villar