Portal:Cue sports
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The Cue Sports Portal
Cue sports are a wide variety of games of skill played with a cue, which is used to strike billiard balls and thereby cause them to move around a cloth-covered table bounded by elastic bumpers known as cushions. Cue sports are also collectively referred to as billiards, though this term has more specific connotations in some varieties of English.
There are three major subdivisions of games within cue sports:
- Carom billiards, played on tables without pockets, typically ten feet in length, including straight rail, balkline, one-cushion carom, three-cushion billiards, artistic billiards, and four-ball
- Pocket billiards (or pool), played on six-pocket tables of seven, eight, nine, or ten-foot length, including among others eight-ball (the world's most widely played cue sport), nine-ball (the dominant professional game), ten-ball, straight pool (the formerly dominant pro game), one-pocket, and bank pool
- Snooker, English billiards, and Russian pyramid, played on a large, six-pocket table (dimensions just under 12 ft by 6 ft), all of which are classified separately from pool based on distinct development histories, player culture, rules, and terminology.
Billiards has a long history from its inception in the 15th century, with many mentions in the works of Shakespeare, including the line "let's to billiards" in Antony and Cleopatra (1606–07). Enthusiasts of the sport have included Mozart, Louis XIV of France, Marie Antoinette, Immanuel Kant, Napoleon, Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, George Washington, Jules Grévy, Charles Dickens, George Armstrong Custer, Theodore Roosevelt, Lewis Carroll, W. C. Fields, Babe Ruth, Bob Hope, and Jackie Gleason. (Full article...)
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The 2018 World Snooker Championship (officially the 2018 Betfred World Snooker Championship) was a professional snooker tournament held from 21 April to 7 May 2018 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. Hosted by the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association, it was the 20th and final ranking event of the 2017–18 snooker season and the 42nd consecutive time the World Snooker Championship had been held at the venue. The tournament was broadcast by BBC Sport and Eurosport in Europe, and sponsored by betting company Betfred.
Welsh left-hander Mark Williams won his third world championship and 21st ranking title, defeating Scottish professional John Higgins 18–16 in the final. Williams' victory came 15 years after his second world title in 2003; before the start of the season, he had not won a ranking event in the previous six years. In winning the event, Williams received the highest prize money awarded for a snooker event, £425,000 of a total pool of £1,968,000. Aged 43, he was the third oldest winner at the crucible after Ronnie O'Sullivan who was 44 when he won the 2020 World Snooker Championship and Ray Reardon who was 45 when he won the title in 1978. Defending and three-time world champion Mark Selby had won the world title for the previous two years, but lost in the first round 4–10 to Joe Perry. (Full article...) -
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The 2019 Tour Championship (officially the 2019 Coral Tour Championship) was a professional snooker ranking tournament that took place from 19 to 24 March 2019 at Venue Cymru in Llandudno, Wales. Organised by World Snooker, it was the first edition of the Tour Championship and the third and final event of the inaugural Coral Cup. It was the eighteenth ranking event of the 2018–19 snooker season.
The draw for the Tour Championship comprised the top eight players based on the single year ranking list, taking part in a single elimination tournament. Each match was played over a minimum of two sessions, the final as best-of-25-frames over two days. The winner of the tournament won £150,000 out of a total prize fund of £375,000. The event was sponsored by betting company Coral. (Full article...) -
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Snooker (pronounced UK: /ˈsnuːkər/ SNOO-kər, US: /ˈsnʊkər/ SNUUK-ər) is a cue sport played on a rectangular billiards table covered with a green cloth called baize, with six pockets, one at each corner and one in the middle of each long side. First played by British Army officers stationed in India in the second half of the 19th century, the game is played with twenty-two balls, comprising a white cue ball, fifteen red balls, and six other balls—a yellow, green, brown, blue, pink, and black—collectively called the colours. Using a cue stick, the individual players or teams take turns to strike the cue ball to pot other balls in a predefined sequence, accumulating points for each successful pot and for each time the opposing player or team commits a foul. An individual frame of snooker is won by the player who has scored the most points. A snooker match ends when a player reaches a predetermined number of frames.
In 1875, army officer Neville Chamberlain, stationed in India, devised a set of rules that combined black pool and pyramids. The word snooker was a well-established derogatory term used to describe inexperienced or first-year military personnel. In the early 20th century, snooker was predominantly played in the United Kingdom where it was considered a "gentleman's sport" until the early 1960s, before growing in popularity as a national pastime and eventually spreading overseas. The standard rules of the game were first established in 1919 when the Billiards Association and Control Club was formed. As a professional sport, snooker is now governed by the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association. (Full article...) -
Image 4The 1983 World Snooker Championship (also known as the 1983 Embassy World Snooker Championship for the purposes of sponsorship) was a professional snooker tournament that took place between 16 April and 2 May 1983 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. This was the third and final world ranking event of the 1982–83 snooker season following the 1982 Professional Players Tournament. Sixteen seeded players qualified directly for the event, with an additional sixteen players progressing through a two-round qualification round held at the Romiley Forum in Stockport, and Redwood Lodge in Bristol. The winner of the event received £30,000, and the tournament was sponsored by cigarette company Embassy.
Alex Higgins was the defending champion, having won the 1982 championship, but he lost 5–16 to Steve Davis in the semi-finals. Davis, the 1981 champion, won the event for the second time, defeating Cliff Thorburn 18–6 in the final. A total of 18 century breaks were made during the tournament. The highest was made by Thorburn in the fourth frame of his second round match against Terry Griffiths, where he compiled a maximum break of 147 points, becoming the first player to make such a break in a World Championship match. (Full article...) -
Image 5The 1988 World Snooker Championship, also known as the 1988 Embassy World Snooker Championship for sponsorship reasons, was a professional snooker tournament that took place from 16 April to 2 May 1988 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. Organised by the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA), it was the sixth and final ranking event of the 1987–88 snooker season and the twelfth consecutive World Snooker Championship to be held at the Crucible, the first tournament there having taken place in 1977.
A five-round qualifying event for the championship was held at the Preston Guild Hall from 22 March to 2 April 1988 for 113 players, 16 of whom reached the main stage, where they met the 16 invited seeded players. The tournament was broadcast in the United Kingdom by the BBC, and was sponsored by the Embassy cigarette company. The winner received £95,000 from the total prize fund of £475,000. (Full article...) -
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The 2020 World Snooker Championship (officially the 2020 Betfred World Snooker Championship) was a professional snooker tournament that took place from 31 July to 16 August 2020 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. It was the 44th consecutive year that the World Snooker Championship was held at the Crucible. The final ranking event of the 2019–20 snooker season, the tournament was originally scheduled to take place from 18 April to 4 May 2020, but both the qualifying stage and the main rounds were postponed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The event was one of the first to allow live audiences since the onset of the pandemic, but on the first day it was announced that the event would be played behind closed doors for subsequent days. A limited number of spectators were allowed in for the final two days of the championship.
The tournament was organised by the World Snooker Tour, a subsidiary of the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association, and was broadcast by the BBC, Eurosport and Matchroom Sport. The event had a total prize fund of £2,395,000, with the winner receiving £500,000. Qualifying for the tournament was due to be held between 8 and 15 April 2020 but instead took place from 21 to 28 July at the English Institute of Sport, Sheffield. There were 128 participants in the qualifying rounds, with a mix of professional and invited amateur players, 16 of whom reached the main stage of the tournament where they played the top 16 players in the snooker world rankings. The event was sponsored by sports betting company Betfred. (Full article...) -
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The 2020 Masters (officially the 2020 Dafabet Masters) was a professional non-ranking snooker tournament that took place at Alexandra Palace in London, England, from 12 to 19 January 2020. It was the 46th staging of the Masters tournament, which was first held in 1975, and the second of three Triple Crown events in the 2019–20 season, following the 2019 UK Championship and preceding the 2020 World Snooker Championship. The event invites the top sixteen players from the snooker world rankings in a knockout tournament. It was organised by the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association and was broadcast by the BBC and Eurosport in Europe.
Judd Trump was the defending champion, having defeated Ronnie O'Sullivan 10–4 in the final of the previous year's event. Trump lost to Shaun Murphy 3–6 in the first round. O'Sullivan was eligible to compete, but chose not to participate, so his entry was given to Ali Carter, next on the world ranking list. Carter reached the final, where he played Stuart Bingham; recovering from 5–7 behind, Bingham won the final 10–8 to claim his first Masters title. He became the oldest Masters champion at the age of 43 years and 243 days, beating the previous record set by Ray Reardon in 1976; Bingham remained the tournament's oldest winner until 2024, when O'Sullivan won the title aged 48 years and 40 days. (Full article...) -
Image 8The 2020 Tour Championship (officially the 2020 Coral Tour Championship) was a professional snooker tournament that took place from 20 to 26 June 2020, at the Marshall Arena in Milton Keynes, England. Organised by the World Snooker Tour, it was the second edition of the Tour Championship and the third and final event of the second season of the Coral Cup. It was the 16th and penultimate ranking event of the 2019–20 snooker season following the Gibraltar Open and preceding the World Championship. The tournament was originally scheduled for 17 to 22 March 2020, but on the morning of 17 March the event was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Following advice from the UK government, it had been decided that no spectators would be permitted at the event.
The draw for the Tour Championship comprised the top eight players based on the single year ranking list. The event was contested as a single-elimination tournament, with each match played over a minimum of two sessions and the final being a best-of-19-frames match. The winner of the tournament won £150,000 out of a total prize fund of £380,000. The event was sponsored by betting company Coral. (Full article...) -
Image 9The 2019 WPA World Ten-ball Championship was a professional pool tournament for the discipline of ten-ball organised by the World Pool-Billiard Association (WPA) and CueSports International. It was the fifth WPA World Ten-ball Championship; the previous championship was held in 2015. After plans for an event in both 2016 and 2018 to be held in Manila fell through, a 2019 event at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas as part of a three-year deal for the event to be played in the United States was agreed. The event was held concurrently with the Billiard Congress of America's National Ten-ball event from July 22 to 26. The event was sponsored by cue manufacturer Predator Group.
The competition featured 64 participants, selected according to world and continental pool rankings as well as qualifying events. The tournament was played as a double-elimination bracket until 16 players remained, at which point it changed to a single-elimination format. Ko Ping-chung, representing Chinese Taipei, won the event, defeating German player Joshua Filler 10–7 in the final. Ko's brother Ko Pin-yi, who was the defending champion, lost to Filler 10–8 in the semi-final. The event featured a prize fund of $132,000, the winner receiving $30,000. (Full article...) -
Image 10The 2021 World Snooker Championship (officially the 2021 Betfred World Snooker Championship) was a professional snooker tournament that took place from 17 April to 3 May 2021 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. It was the 45th consecutive year the World Snooker Championship was held at the Crucible Theatre and the 15th and final ranking event of the 2020–21 snooker season. It was organised by the World Snooker Tour. The event was sponsored by sports betting company Betfred and broadcast by the BBC, Eurosport and Matchroom Sport. It featured a total prize fund of £2,395,000 of which the winner received £500,000.
Qualifying for the tournament took place between 5 and 14 April 2021 at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield. There were 128 participants in the qualifying rounds, consisting of a mix of professional and invited amateur players. The main stage of the tournament featured 32 players: the top 16 players from the snooker world rankings and an additional 16 players from the qualifying rounds. Ronnie O'Sullivan was the defending champion, having won his sixth world title at the previous year's event, where he defeated Kyren Wilson 18–8 in the final. O'Sullivan lost in the second round to Anthony McGill 12–13. Mark Selby defeated Shaun Murphy 18–15 in the final to win his fourth world title and the 20th ranking title of his career. There were a record 108 century breaks made at the Crucible, with an additional 106 made in qualifying rounds. The tournament's highest break was 144 by Murphy in the second round. (Full article...)
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Nick Varner (born May 15, 1948, in Owensboro, Kentucky) is an American professional pool player who was inducted into the Billiard Congress of America Hall of Fame in 1992. Varner is widely considered one of the greatest pool players of all time. Varner is a multiple world champion and has won back to back U.S. Open 9-Ball Championships, in addition to being the oldest player to ever win the WPA World Nine-ball Championship, at 51 years old. (Full article...) -
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Robbie Williams (born 28 December 1986) is an English professional snooker player.
Williams turned professional in 2012 after qualifying in Event 3 of the Q School and gained a two-year tour card for the 2012/13 and 2013/14 snooker seasons. (Full article...) -
Image 3Ralph Greenleaf (November 3, 1899 – March 15, 1950) was an American professional pool and carom billiards player. Greenleaf is widely considered one of the greatest pool players of all time. Between the years 1919 and 1938, he won the World Straight Pool Championship nineteen times.
His obituary in The New York Times said of Greenleaf, in March 1950: "What Babe Ruth did for baseball, Dempsey did for fighting, Tilden did for tennis...Greenleaf did for pocket billiards."
The championships of his era were contested in the game of 14.1 continuous ("straight pool"), but varied in format from contest to contest and were not annual events. Championships were challenge matches between two players often played over several days to relatively high numbers (1,500 points for example). (Full article...) -
Image 4Sport Lisboa e Benfica (Portuguese pronunciation: [sɨˈpɔɾ liʒˈβoɐ i βɐ̃jˈfikɐ] ⓘ), commonly known as Benfica, is a semi-professional billiards team based in Lisbon, Portugal. Founded in 1938, Benfica compete in the Portuguese Billiards League, in carom billiards (three-cushion), pool (eight-ball and nine-ball), and snooker events. The team is almost exclusively composed of Portuguese players. They play at the Estádio da Luz in a 202 square meters room with 4 professional pool tables and a 50 people stand. (Full article...)
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Francisco Bustamante (born December 29, 1963) is a Filipino professional pool player from Tarlac, Central Luzon and the 2010 World Nine-ball Champion, nicknamed "Django", after the lead character of the 1966 film of the same name, and sometimes also called "Bustie", especially in the United States. Bustamante has won over 70 International titles and is considered one of the best pool players of all time. (Full article...) -
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Ken Doherty (born 17 September 1969) is an Irish professional snooker player who was World Snooker Champion in 1997. In addition to his ongoing playing career, he works as a regular commentator and pundit on televised snooker broadcasts. A director since 2012 of the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association, he also served from 2021 to 2024 as inaugural chairman of the WPBSA Players organisation.
Born and raised in Dublin, Doherty won amateur titles including the World Under-21 Amateur Championship and the World Amateur Championship in 1989. He turned professional in 1990 and reached the first of his 17 ranking finals at the 1992 Grand Prix, losing 9–10 to Jimmy White. He won the first of his six ranking titles several months later at the 1993 Welsh Open, beating Alan McManus 9–7 in the final. These results helped him enter the top 16 for the first time in the 1993/1994 rankings. He secured his only world title at the 1997 World Snooker Championship, where he ended Stephen Hendry's record 29-match winning streak at the Crucible with an 18–12 victory in the final. The first and only World Champion from the Republic of Ireland, Doherty became the second player from outside the United Kingdom to win the world title in the modern era, following Canada's Cliff Thorburn in 1980. He remains the only player to have won world titles at under-21, amateur, and professional levels.
Doherty has been runner-up at two other World Championships. As defending champion at the 1998 event, he came close to breaking the Crucible curse, but lost the final 12–18 to John Higgins. Facing Mark Williams in the 2003 final, he recovered from 2–10 behind to tie the scores at 11–11, but ultimately lost 16–18. In other Triple Crown events, he has been UK Championship runner-up three times (losing 5–10 to Hendry in 1994, 1–10 to Ronnie O'Sullivan in 2001, and 9–10 to Williams in 2002) and Masters runner-up twice (losing 8–10 to Higgins in 1999 and 8–10 to Matthew Stevens in 2000). In all, Doherty has won just one of the eight Triple Crown finals he has contested. In the 2000 Masters final, he narrowly missed out on a maximum break bonus prize of an £80,000 sports car when he failed to pot the last black off its spot, ending the break at 140. (Full article...) -
Image 7The World Straight Pool Championship is a pool competition, that was held up until the game of Nine-ball became popularized in America. It was the most prestigious straight pool tournament up until the early 21st century, tournaments like the American 14.1 Straight Pool Championship and the European Pool Championship 14.1 that are still held annually, have gained prominence in recent years. During the tournament's early years, it was the only global professional title for straight pool (also known as 14.1 continuous). The event was revived in 2006, in part to restore the game's popularity in the United States. The World Straight Pool Championship was sanctioned by the World Pool-Billiard Association (WPA) in 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2010. The tournament continued unsanctioned from 2011 to 2019. Ralph Greenleaf & Willie Mosconi are the most successful players having both won the tournament on 19 occasions. The oldest player to win the tournament is Irving Crane at 59 years old at the time of his victory. The youngest player to win the tournament is Ralph Greenleaf at 20 years old at the time of his first victory. (Full article...)
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Image 8Edward Francis Charlton, AM (31 October 1929 – 7 November 2004) was an Australian professional snooker and English billiards player.* He remains the only player to have been world championship runner-up in both snooker and billiards without winning either title. He later became a successful marketer of sporting goods launching a popular brand of billiard room equipment bearing his name. (Full article...)
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Albin Alois Ouschan (born August 14, 1990, in Klagenfurt, Austria) is an Austrian professional pool player. Ouschan was the 2016 WPA World Nine-ball Championship winner, as well as the runner-up in 2014. He also won the 14.1 Continuous European championship the same year. Ouschan is a multiple time Austrian champion in 8-ball, ten-ball and straight pool. Ouschan alongside partner Mario He won both the 2017 World Cup of Pool, 2019 World Cup of Pool and reached the final of the 2018 World Cup of Pool. They would lose 10–3 to the Chinese team of Wu Jia-qing & Liu Haitao. He won the WPA World Nine-ball Championship for the second time in 2021, beating Omar Al-Shaheen 13–9 in the final. He won the International Open in 2021, defeating Dennis Orcollo 13–6 in the final. (Full article...) -
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Hammad Miah (born 6 July 1993) is an English professional snooker player.
In May 2013, Miah qualified for the 2013–14 and 2014–15 professional Main Tour as one of four semi-finalists from the first 2013 Q School event. Hammad Miah is based at Whetstone Snooker Club in Barnet, England. He regained his card through the 2021 Q School Order of Merit for the 2021-22 and 2022-23 seasons. (Full article...)
Did you know (auto-generated) - load new batch
- ... that both finalists at the 2008 World Snooker Championship made maximum breaks during the tournament?
- ... that the 1810s reign of Ioan Caragea introduced Wallachia to carom billiards, sugar sculptures, and an eponymous plague?
- ... that a snooker table used at the 2022 Turkish Masters was fixed with a car jack?
- ... that Turkish carom billiards champion Güzin Müjde Karakaşlı grew up playing volleyball for about 12 years?
- ... that the Highfield Cocoa and Coffee House in Sheffield, England, sold tea, coffee and cocoa at a penny a pint and also provided billiards and reading rooms?
- ... that Kyren Wilson won the first four frames in all of his snooker matches at the 2023 Tour Championship?
- ... that the 1947 World Snooker Championship was the first world snooker championship where the winner wasn't Joe Davis?
- ... that Mark Williams travelled for more than 13 hours to be a last-minute replacement at the 2022 Hong Kong Masters?
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Image 1The 2020 Championship League (also known as the 2020 Matchroom.com Championship League) was a professional non-ranking snooker tournament that took place from 1 to 11 June 2020 at the Marshall Arena in Milton Keynes, England. The event featured 64 players from the World Snooker Tour featuring three rounds of round-robin groups of four. The initial group stage matches were played between 1 and 8 June, with the group winners' stage played on 9 and 10 June, before the finals stage on 11 June. It was the 14th edition of the Championship League. The event was one of the first live sporting events in the United Kingdom since the start of the coronavirus lockdown in March 2020.
Luca Brecel won the event after finishing top of the final group ahead of Ben Woollaston, Stuart Bingham and Ryan Day. The event was broadcast on ITV4 in the United Kingdom, Eurosport across Europe, Superstars Online, Youku and Zhibo.tv in China, Fox Sports in Australia and Sky in New Zealand. Elsewhere, the event was broadcast on Matchroom Sport. (Full article...) -
Image 2Ina Kaplan (née Jentschura; born 14 May 1987) is a German professional pool player. She is an eleven-time German national champion and is the second female player (after Franziska Stark) to win three of four disciplines in one event at the championships.
In 2010, Kaplan reached the final of the European Pool Championships in ten-ball, finishing as runner-up behind Jasmin Ouschan. In the Women's Euro Tour, Kaplan won events in 2013, 2014, and 2017 and finished three times as a runner-up. Kaplan is third on the all-time list of winners in the tour, behind Ouschan and Kristina Tkach with a total of 12 medals from the events. Kaplan also promotes pool events, usually women's events. She is married to fellow German pool player Jörn Kaplan. They share a professional pool club, where she was the first woman to play in the highest tier of German club pool, the 1st Bundesliga [de]. (Full article...) -
Image 3The 2001 Masters (officially the 2001 Benson & Hedges Masters) was a professional invitational snooker tournament held at the Wembley Conference Centre, London, from 4 to 11 February 2001. It was the 27th edition of The Masters, a Triple Crown event and the third of the five World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA) invitational events in the 2000–01 snooker season. It followed the 2000 Scottish Masters and preceded the 2001 Malta Grand Prix. Sponsored by the cigarette company Benson & Hedges, the event had a total prize fund of £650,000, with £175,000 going to the winner.
Matthew Stevens was the tournament's defending champion, but he lost in the second round to Paul Hunter, who went on to reach the final with victories over Peter Ebdon in the quarter-finals and Stephen Hendry in the semi-finals. Hunter's opponent in the final was Fergal O'Brien, who had defeated Dave Harold in his semi-final. Hunter defeated O'Brien 10–9 to win the first of three Masters titles. He and wild card entrant Jimmy White made century breaks of 136, which were the competition's two highest breaks. (Full article...) -
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Oliver Ortmann (born 11 June 1967) is a German professional pool player from Gelsenkirchen. Ortmann is a three-time world champion, winning the 1995 WPA World Nine-ball Championship and the 2007 and 2010 World Straight Pool Championship. Ortmann became the second player (after Earl Strickland) to win three WPA world championships. With fourteen wins, he the second most successful player (after Ralf Souquet) at the European Pool Championships. Ortmann is also the second most successful player (after Ralf Souquet) on the Euro Tour, winning fourteen events. Ortmann was the first non-American player to win the BCA U.S. Open Straight Pool Championship, in 1989.
He has represented Europe eight times in the annual Mosconi Cup competition between 1994 and 2004, and was on the winning side in 1995 and 2002. With 44 German national medals and 16 German Pool Championships, Ortmann is one of the most successful German pool players of all time. In 1996, he was the first cue sports player to receive the Silbernes Lorbeerblatt, the highest sporting award given in Germany. In 2014, Ortmann was inducted into the Billiard Congress of America Hall of Fame. (Full article...) -
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The 2020 Shoot Out (officially the 2020 BetVictor Snooker Shoot Out) was a professional ranking snooker tournament held from 20 to 23 February 2020 at the Watford Colosseum in Watford, England. It was the 13th ranking event of the 2019–20 snooker season. It was played under a variation of the standard rules of snooker. The event was the third of four events sponsored by BetVictor, making up the 2020 European Series.
The defending champion was Thailand's Thepchaiya Un-Nooh, who defeated England's Michael Holt 74–0 in the 2019 final. In 2020, Un-Nooh was beaten by Peter Lines in the second round. For the second consecutive year, Holt reached the final, where he defeated Zhou Yuelong 64–1. There were four century breaks during the event, the highest being a 133 by Thor Chuan Leong. There was a prize fund of £171,000, £50,000 of which was awarded to the winner. (Full article...) -
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Efren Manalang Reyes OLD PLH (born August 26, 1954), popularly known by the nicknames "Bata" (Tagalog for 'Kid') and "the Magician", is a Filipino professional pool player, who is widely regarded as the greatest pool player of all time, and especially famed for his skill at the challenging one-pocket discipline. In 2003, he was inducted into the Billiard Congress of America's Hall of Fame.
A winner of over 100 international titles, Reyes was the first player to win the WPA World Championships in two different pool disciplines. Among his numerous titles, Reyes is a WPA World Nine-ball Champion and WPA World Eight-ball Champion, a U.S. Open Nine-ball Championship winner, a four-time Sands Regency Nine-ball Open winner, a four-time All Japan Championship winner, a seven-time WPA Asian Nine-ball Tour Champion, and a record thirteen-time Derby City Classic winner. Reyes also represented the Philippines at the World Cup of Pool, winning the event with his partner Francisco Bustamante in 2006 and 2009. Reyes defeated American champion Earl Strickland twice in The Color of Money challenge match in 1996 and a rematch in 2001. In their first challenge match in 1996, Reyes took home the winner-take-all prize of $100,000, the highest single-event purse in the history of pool at that time. (Full article...) -
Image 7Clifford Wilson (10 May 1934 – 21 May 1994) was a Welsh professional snooker player who reached the highest ranking of 16, in 1988-89. He was the 1978 World Amateur Champion and won the 1991 World Seniors Championship. He was a successful junior player, known for his fast attacking snooker and potting ability, and won the British Under-19 Championship in 1951 and 1952. In the early 1950s both Wilson and future six-times World Professional Champion Ray Reardon lived in Tredegar, where they played a succession of money matches that attracted large enthusiastic crowds.
A combination of factors, including Reardon leaving Tredegar, led to Wilson virtually giving up the game from 1957 to 1972, but after being asked to take up a vacant place in a works team, he returned to playing and later became the 1978 World Amateur Champion, achieving his victory with an 11–5 win in the final against Joe Johnson. In 1979 Wilson turned professional, aged 45, and, still playing with an attacking style, reached several ranking tournament quarter-finals during his career. At the inaugural World Seniors Championship in 1991 he beat Eddie Charlton 5–4 in the final to take the title. He won the Welsh Amateur Championship in 1956, 1977 and 1979, and was runner-up in the Welsh Professional Championship in 1981 and 1984. He suffered from a number of health conditions, including poor eyesight, during his career, but continued to play professionally until his death in 1994 at the age of 60. (Full article...) -
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The Hustler is a 1961 drama film, directed by Robert Rossen. It tells the story of small-time pool hustler "Fast Eddie" Felson, who challenges legendary pool player "Minnesota Fats".
The film, which was based on a book of the same name by Walter Tevis, stars Paul Newman as Fast Eddie, Jackie Gleason as Minnesota Fats, Piper Laurie as Sarah, George C. Scott as Bert, and Myron McCormick as Charlie. (Full article...) -
Image 9The 2019 Q School was a series of three snooker tournaments held during the 2019–20 snooker season. An event for amateur players, it served as a qualification event for a place on the professional World Snooker Tour for the following two seasons. The events took place in May and June 2019 at the Robin Park Leisure Centre in Wigan, England. The event was organised by World Snooker, with entries for the event costing £1,000 but with no maximum number of participants.
Each tournament is split into four paths, with the winner of each path being awarded a place on the World Snooker Tour for the 2019–20 season and the 2020–21 snooker season. Twelve players qualified from the events: Chen Zifan, Riley Parsons, Louis Heathcote, Fraser Patrick, Xu Si, David Lilley, Jamie O'Neill, Soheil Vahedi, Barry Pinches, Alex Borg, Alexander Ursenbacher and Andy Hicks. Four more players: Si Jiahui, Billy Joe Castle, Peter Lines and Lei Peifan; were also given tour cards for being at the top of the Order of Merit. The highest break of the events was a 137 made by both Xu Si in event one and Lucky Vatnani in event two. (Full article...) -
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William Hoskins (1862–1934) was an American inventor, chemist, electrical engineer, and entrepreneur in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most active in Chicago, Illinois. He became the co-inventor in 1897 of modern billiard chalk with professional carom billiards player William A. Spinks. He is, however, best known for the invention of the electric heating coil (the basis for numerous ubiquitous household and industrial appliances, including electric stoves, space heaters, and toasters) and the invention of the first electric toaster. (Full article...)
General images - load new batch
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Image 1A full-size snooker table set up for the start of a game (from Snooker)
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Image 2Illustration A: Aerial view of a snooker table with the balls in their starting positions. The cue ball (white) may be placed anywhere in the semicircle (known as the "D") at the start of the game. (from Snooker)
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Image 3The Family Remy by Januarius Zick, c. 1776, featuring billiards among other parlour activities (from Carom billiards)
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Image 5alt=Pink snooker ball (from Snooker)
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Image 6alt=Blue snooker ball (from Snooker)
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Image 7alt=Green snooker ball (from Snooker)
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Image 8Historic print depicting Michael Phelan's Billiard Saloon located at the corner of 10th Street and Broadway in Manhattan, 1 January 1859 (from Carom billiards)
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Image 11Balkline table with standard markings (from Carom billiards)
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Image 12alt=Yellow snooker ball (from Snooker)
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Image 13A pool table diagram (from Pool (cue sports))
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Image 14A set of standard carom billiard balls, comprising a red object ball, one plain white cue ball, and one dotted white cue ball (replaced in modern three-cushion billiards by a yellow ball) for the opponent (from Carom billiards)
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Image 16alt=Black snooker ball (from Snooker)
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Image 18A player racking the balls (from Pool (cue sports))
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Image 19alt=Brown snooker ball (from Snooker)
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Image 20Paul Gauguin's 1888 painting Night Café at Arles includes a depiction of French billiards (from Carom billiards)
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Image 21Dutch pool player Niels Feijen at the 2008 European Pool Championship (from Pool (cue sports))
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Image 22A complete set of snooker balls (from Snooker)
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Image 23alt=Red snooker ball (from Snooker)
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Image 24A close-up view of a cue tip about to strike the cue ball, the aim being to pot the red ball into a corner pocket (from Snooker)
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Image 25Ronnie O'Sullivan has won the World Championship seven times in the 21st century. (from Snooker)
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Image 28A sliding scoreboard, some blocks of cue-tip chalk, white chalk-board chalk, and two cue sticks (from Snooker)
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Pool games | ||
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Carom billiards | ||
Snooker | ||
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Major international tournaments |
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Cue sports portal The rules of games in italics are standardized by international sanctioning bodies. |
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Early events | |
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Match-play | |
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Tournaments | |
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Active professional snooker tournaments | |
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