5th December, Doha: 2012 champion, Kim Bolleby of Sweden took over pole position in the qualifying standings of the H.H. Emir Cup 2023 at Qatar International Bowling Center on Tuesday.

Bolleby, who made two attempts yesterday with 703 nd 740, improved with two additional attempts and posted 707 and 727 to take his 9-game tally of 2174 for the top spot. Mostafa Al-Mousawai of Kuwait who led yesterday with 2098, settled for second despite improving his total to 2141.

Ivan Tse of Hong Kong, China, who also improved his total from 2082 to 2121, remained in third while his countrymen, Eric Tseng, who celebrated his 33rd birthday today, moved into fourth position with 2084.

Two-hander, Ali Al Rashi of UAE dropped down to fifth with 2083 while Timmy Tan of Malaysia, who managed only 663 in his latest attempt, still made the top bracket in sixth position with 2082 dislodging Yousef Al-Jabir of Qatar into seventh position with 2074.

Qualifiers positioned 1 to 6 will earn a bye and automatically advance to Step 2 finals. Qualifiers positioned 7 to 26 along with the top 2 Qatari youth, top 2 qualifiers from the first two days of qualifying and the top 2 from the one-game desperado squad will make the cut for Step 1 finals.

Step 1 finalists will bowl 8 games and the top 10 with the highest scores will advance to Step 2 finals, joined by the top 6 seeded qualifiers from the general standings for another 8 games.

The top 5 with the highest scores in Step 2 finals will proceed to the next step. Players positioned 3, 4 and 5 will bowl one game in Step 3. The winner will proceed to meet the second seed from Step 2 over one game in Step 4.

The winner in Step 4 will meet the top seed from Step 2 in the title match in Step 5. The winner of Step 5 will be declared the champion.

Photos by Terence Yaw in Doha, Qatar.