MANILA, Philippines—Carlo Biado became the first Filipino two-time winner of the World Pool Championship after edging out last year’s champion Fedor Gorst, 15-13, in a back-and-forth final on Saturday night (early Sunday in Manila) in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Biado showed composure despite squandering leads of 9-2 and 13-9 on his way to taking home the top purse of $250,000 (P14.29 million) and repeating his breakthrough triumph eight years ago in Doha, Qatar.

READ: Filipino World Pool finalist assured with Biado-Regalario semis clash

It was also the last time that a cue artist from the Philippines won the prestigious 9-ball competition.

The 41-year-old earlier made it to the championship match after dominating 20-year-old Bernie Regalario, 11-3, in an all-Filipino semis.

Gorst, the Russian-born pool player who now represents the United States, settled on a runner-up finish after falling short of repeating the feat he pulled off the previous edition when he came back to beat Eklent Kaci.

He arranged a title showdown with Biado after defeating Kaci, 11-7, in the other semis.

Despite dropping the first two racks, Biado roared back to win nine in a row and it appeared that he would breeze past Gorst, who is 16 years younger.

But Gorst refused to back down and turned the tables on Biado to take seven consecutive racks and tie the final at 9-9.

Biado regained the advantage at 13-9 with four straight victories before Gorst responded with another rally to even things up after the 26th rack.

A dry break by Gorst on the succeeding frame, however, proved to be the opening Biado needed to close out the match and join Earl Strickland, Johnny Archer, Chao Fong-Pang, Thorsten Hohmann and Gorst as a multi-time World Pool champion.

Efren “Bata” Reyes (1999), Ronnie Alcano (2006) and Francisco “Django” Bustamante were the previous Filipinos to win the event.