"I am so happy and there are no words to describe how happy I am now."
Alex Reyes smiled and said after winning THE WORLD 2016 STAGE 2 that was held in France on Jun.19 (Sun). He captured the victory and became one of the strongest soft tip darts players of the world although he just started to participate in THE WORLD from 2015.

A world class performance that fascinates audiences

Reyes won all the matches in the pretournament round robin. His winning streak continued on during the final four. In the semi-final, the US player competed against Boris Krcmar who was aiming to be the winner for 3 years in a row. Although the match was close, Reyes defeated the Croatian player by leading the game with 2 consecutive 9-marks.

A final between 2 US players. Reyes fought against Leonard Gates who missed the chance to be the 2015 champion last year. The 3rd leg that begun 1-1 was the tipping point of their game. Reyes stopped their intense shooting that went over 1000 points and started to lead the game. In the 4th leg, both players continued hitting BULL and their remaining points were 101 each at the start of the 5th round. Reyes was the first to throw and his first dart hit BULL and the second did T17. This performance enthralled the audience.

Cyril Blot as the audience pleaser

Cyril Blot pleased the audience the most in this tournament as he is the local player of the tournament venue although Gates defeated him. Many darts fans must have heard his name before as the French player was among the 16 players of "SUPER DARTS 2013".

Blot has continued competing in THE WORLD since 2012 and he was ranked 31st in THE WORLD 2015 although he didn't compete all the stages. In this season, Blot became BEST 4 in STAGE2 for the first time and jumped to the 5th in the annual ranking. We are looking forward to seeing how far he can go in this season.

Boris Krcmar as the point leader

Currently Boris Krcmar is leading in the annual ranking, as he earned substantial points in STAGE 2 after winning STAGE1, Gates is the 2nd as he became the runner-up of the STAGE 2, and the STAGE 2 winner, Reyes is the 3rd. However, the point differences are very small among those 3 players. They can shuffle the positions even in the next stage. Of course, the players that are ranked 4 or lower still have a chance to replace the leading players. One STAGE winning will make a big difference for all players. Among the possible ranking upsetters, there are many strong players such as Harith Lim of Singapore, Royden Lam of Hong Kong, Martin Marti of Spain and Yutaro Sato of Japan.

As this season has less STAGES than usual, the result of each STAGE has higher significance. The middle stage of the season, STAGE 3 will be coming next month. Don't miss THE WORLD 2016 STAGE 3 in Taipei on Aug. 14 (Sun).