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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Image 1The 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 2The 1989 World Snooker Championship (also referred to as the Embassy World Snooker Championship for sponsorship reasons) was a professional snooker tournament that took place from 15 April to 1 May 1989 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. Organised by the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association, it was the eighth and final ranking event of the 1988–89 snooker season and the thirteenth consecutive World Snooker Championship to be held at the Crucible, the first tournament at this location having taken place in 1977. There were 142 entrants to the competition.
The defending champion was Steve Davis, who had previously won the World Championship five times. He met John Parrott in the final, which was a best-of-35-frames match. Davis won the match 18–3, which remains the biggest winning margin in the sport's modern era, and meant that the final, scheduled for four sessions, finished with a session to spare. This was Davis's sixth and last world title, and his last appearance in a World Championship final. Stephen Hendry scored the championship's highest break, a 141, in his quarter-final match. There were 19 century breaks compiled during the championship. (Full article...) -
Image 3The 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 4The 1984 World Snooker Championship (also referred to as the 1984 Embassy World Snooker Championship for the purpose of sponsorship) was a ranking professional snooker tournament that took place between 21 April and 7 May 1984 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. The event was organised by the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association, and was the eighth consecutive World Snooker Championship to be held at the Crucible since the 1977 event. The event featured 94 participants, of which 78 players competed in a qualifying event held at the Redwood Lodge in Bristol from 1 to 13 April. Of these, 16 players qualified for the main stage in Sheffield, where they met 16 invited seeds. The total prize fund for the event was £200,000, the highest total pool for any snooker tournament at that time; the winner received £44,000.
The defending champion was English player Steve Davis, who had won the title twice previously. He met fellow-countryman Jimmy White in the final, which was played as a best-of-35-frames match. Davis took a significant lead of 12–4 after the first two sessions; although White battled back into the match, Davis eventually won 18–16, becoming the first player to retain the title at the Crucible. Rex Williams secured the championship's highest break, scoring a 138 in the 12th frame of his first-round loss to White. Eight century breaks were made during the competition, the fewest since the 1978 event. The tournament was sponsored by cigarette manufacturer Embassy, and broadcast by BBC. (Full article...) -
Image 5The 1987 World Snooker Championship (also referred to as the 1987 Embassy World Snooker Championship for the purpose of sponsorship) was a professional snooker tournament that took place between 18 April and 4 May 1987 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. It was the sixth and final ranking event of the 1986–87 snooker season. The championship was the 1987 edition of the World Snooker Championship, first held in 1927, and had 32 participants. The highest ranked 16 players were awarded a place in the first round draw, whilst a pre-tournament qualification event for 104 professionals was held between 26 March and 4 April at the Preston Guild Hall for the remaining places. The tournament was sponsored by cigarette manufacturer Embassy and had a prize fund of £400,000 with the winner receiving £80,000.
Since his 1986 victory, Joe Johnson had experienced a disappointing season leading up to the 1987 Championship, and bookmakers considered it unlikely that he would retain the title. Johnson did reach the final, a rematch of the previous year's final against Steve Davis. Davis won his fourth championship by defeating Johnson 18 frames to 14. A total of 18 century breaks were made during the tournament, the highest of which was 127 made by Davis in first frame of the final. Stephen Hendry, aged 18, became the youngest player to win a match in the tournament's history since it moved to the Crucible in 1977, whilst it was the last time that six-times champion Ray Reardon appeared. (Full article...) -
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The 2015 World Snooker Championship (officially the 2015 Betfred World Snooker Championship) was a professional snooker tournament which took place from 18 April to 4 May 2015 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. It was the 39th consecutive year that the World Snooker Championship had been held at the Crucible, and was the final ranking event of the 2014–15 snooker season. Sports betting company Betfred sponsored the event for the first time in three years, having previously done so from 2009 to 2012. The top sixteen players in the snooker world rankings were placed into the draw, and another sixteen players qualified for the event at a tournament taking place from 8 to 15 April 2015 at the Ponds Forge International Sports Centre, Sheffield.
Mark Selby was the defending champion, having defeated Ronnie O'Sullivan in the 2014 final. Selby lost 9–13 in the second round to event debutant Anthony McGill, and became the 16th first-time champion unable to defend his title at the venue. Shaun Murphy, the 2005 winner, met Stuart Bingham in the final. Bingham, who was given odds of 50–1 to win the tournament by bookmakers before the start of the tournament, defeated Murphy 18–15 in the final to win the first world title of his 20-year professional career. Aged 38, Bingham became the oldest player to win the title since Ray Reardon in 1978. (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 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...) -
Image 9The 2021 Tour Championship (officially the 2021 Cazoo Tour Championship) was a professional snooker tournament that took place from 22 to 28 March 2021 at the Celtic Manor Resort in Newport, Wales. Organised by the World Snooker Tour, it was the third edition of the Tour Championship and the third and final event of the third season of the Cazoo Cup. It was the 14th and penultimate ranking event of the 2020–21 snooker season, following the conclusion of the WST Pro Series and preceding the World Championship.
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, each match being played over two sessions. The winner of the tournament received £150,000 out of a total prize fund of £380,000. The event was sponsored by car retailer Cazoo. The defending champion was Stephen Maguire, but as a result of reduced earnings during the season he was unable to qualify and defend the title. In a repeat of the 2019 final Australian Neil Robertson played Englishman Ronnie O'Sullivan. Robertson won the event defeating O'Sullivan 10–4 in the final. There were 26 century breaks made during the event, Barry Hawkins making the highest break, a 138. (Full article...) -
Image 10The 1985 World Snooker Championship (also known as the 1985 Embassy World Snooker Championship for the purpose of sponsorship) was a professional ranking tournament in snooker that took place from 12 to 28 April 1985 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. Organised by the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA), the event was the ninth consecutive World Snooker Championship to be held at the Crucible, the first tournament having taken place in 1977. A five-round qualifying event for the championship was held at the Preston Guild Hall from 29 March to 5 April for 87 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 total prize fund for the event was £250,000, the highest prize pool for any snooker tournament to that date. The winner received £60,000, which was the highest amount ever received by the winner of a snooker event at that time.
The defending champion was Englishman Steve Davis, who had previously won the World Championship three times. He met Northern Irishman Dennis Taylor in the final which was a best-of-35-frames match. Davis took an early 9–1 lead, but Taylor battled back into the match and drew level at 17–17, forcing a deciding frame. The 35th frame was contested over the final black ball, with the player able to pot the ball winning the world title. After Taylor missed three attempts to pot the black, Davis missed his only attempt to leave Taylor a relatively simple pot to win his sole World Championship. The match, often referred to as the "black ball final", is commonly considered to be the best-known match in the history of snooker and a reason for the surge in the sport's popularity in the 1980s and 1990s. (Full article...)
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Image 1The Billiard Congress of America (BCA) is the governing body for cue sports in the United States and Canada, and the regional member organization of the World Pool-Billiard Association (WPA). It was established under this name in 1948 as a non-profit trade organization in order to promote the sport and organize its players via tournaments at various levels. The BCA is headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado. The voting members of the organization are mostly equipment manufacturers.
The BCA publishes an annual rule and record book that incorporates the WPA world standardized rules for games such as nine-ball, eight-ball, ten-ball and straight pool, as well as rules for other games that are not presently the subject of international competition, such as one pocket, bank pool, cowboy pool, rotation, American snooker, and Chicago among many others. The BCA holds an annual trade show, the International Billiards & Home Recreation Expo. Also annually, it inducts great players, and those who have made great contributions to the sport, into the BCA Hall of Fame. (Full article...) -
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Pat Fleming (born 1948) is an American professional pocket billiards player and the founder of Accu-Stats Video Productions. Fleming is the fifty-third inductee into the Billiard Congress of America's Hall of Fame, recognized in the Meritorious Service category on June 12, 2008. In 1983, Fleming invented the Total Performance Average (TPA), a statistical performance analysis system, which is currently the standard metric for professionals. (Full article...) -
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Ricky Walden (born 11 November 1982) is an English professional snooker player from Chester.
Walden turned professional in 2000 and it took him eight years to win his first ranking title at the Shanghai Masters. He has since won the 2012 Wuxi Classic and the 2014 International Championship and has been inside the top 16 in the season-ending rankings on four occasions. A former world Top 6 player, Walden has reached the televised stages of the World Snooker Championship on nine occasions as of 2023, with his best result being a semi-finalist in 2013. (Full article...) -
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Mika Immonen (born 17 December 1972) is a Finnish professional Hall of Fame pool player, nicknamed "The Iceman." (Full article...) -
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Earl Strickland (born June 8, 1961) is an American professional pool player who is considered one of the best nine-ball players of all time. He has won over 100 championship titles and three world titles. In 2006 he was inducted into the Billiard Congress of America's Hall of Fame. In 1996, Strickland won the largest cash prize to date winning the PCA $1,000,000 Challenge by being the first player to run 10 consecutive racks in a tournament. He is also known as one of the sport's most controversial players for his outspoken views and his sometimes volatile behavior at tournaments. (Full article...) -
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Jamie Jones (born 14 February 1988) is a Welsh professional snooker player from Neath. At the age of 14 he was the youngest ever player to make a maximum 147 break in competition, a record that has since been beaten by Judd Trump. At the 2012 World Snooker Championship, Jones reached his first ranking quarter-final. He made his second appearance in the quarter-finals of a Triple Crown tournament at the 2016 UK Championship.
Jones made his first official maximum break in the third frame of his last-64 match against Lee Walker at the 2018 Paul Hunter Classic. It was his first professional maximum break.
In October 2018, Jones was suspended from the snooker tour pending a match-fixing investigation. The match in question was a 2016 International Championship qualifier between former world champion Graeme Dott and Jones's good friend and compatriot David John. (Full article...) -
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Balkline is the overarching title of a group of carom billiards games generally played with two cue balls and a red object ball on a cloth-covered, 5 foot × 10 foot, pocketless billiard table. The object of the game is to score points, also called counts, by a player striking their cue ball so it makes contact with both the opponent's cue ball and the object ball on a single stroke. A player wins the game by reaching a predetermined number of points. The table is divided by lines drawn on the surface, called balklines, into marked regions called balk spaces. Balk spaces define areas of the table surface in which a player may only score up to a threshold number of points while the opponent's cue ball and the object ball are within that region.
The balkline games were developed to be more difficult to play and less tedious for spectators than the precursor game, straight rail. The top players of straight rail became so skillful that they would score a seemingly endless series of points, with the balls barely moving in a confined area of the table. Straight rail, unlike the balkline games, had no balk space restrictions, although one was later added. According to Mike Shamos, curator of the U.S. Billiard Archive, "the skill of dedicated players [of straight rail] was so great that they could essentially score at will." The development of balkline is characterized by a series of back and forth developments, where new rules would be implemented to make the game more difficult and to decrease high runs to keep spectators interested, countered by skill development to account for each new rule. (Full article...) -
Image 8Morton Goldberg (December 17, 1916 – February 22, 1996), was an American professional pool player. Born in Rochester, New York, Goldberg beat such famous pool players as Minnesota Fats, Irving Crane, and Willie Munson (Full article...)
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Rory McLeod (born 26 March 1971) is an English-Jamaican former professional snooker player. He has reached the last 16 in ten ranking tournaments, and his most notable achievement came in 2015, when he won the minor ranking Ruhr Open, beating Tian Pengfei in the final. His highest ranking is 32, which he last reached in 2012.
Having suffered relegation from the main tour at the end of the 2018-2019 season, McLeod spent the 2019-20 season playing on the World Seniors Tour and Challenge Tour; he regained his professional status at the 2020 Q School. (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...)
Did you know (auto-generated) - load new batch
- ... that after winning the 2024 Masters, snooker player Ronnie O'Sullivan is both the youngest and oldest winner of the tournament?
- ... that Turkish carom billiards champion Güzin Müjde Karakaşlı grew up playing volleyball for about 12 years?
- ... that referee Jan Verhaas was informed of an error he made at the 2022 Masters by a member of the crowd?
- ... that Kyren Wilson won the first four frames in all of his snooker matches at the 2023 Tour Championship?
- ... that the final of the 2009 IBSF women's snooker championship was interrupted so that drug tests could be conducted on the players?
- ... that during a match at the snooker 2021 UK Championship, player Mark Williams fell asleep?
- ... that the 1947 World Snooker Championship was the first world snooker championship where the winner wasn't Joe Davis?
- ... that the 1810s reign of Ioan Caragea introduced Wallachia to carom billiards, sugar sculptures, and an eponymous plague?
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Steve Davis OBE (born 22 August 1957) is an English retired professional snooker player who is currently a commentator, DJ, electronic musician and author. He is best known for dominating professional snooker during the 1980s, when he reached eight World Snooker Championship finals in nine years, winning six world titles, and held the world number one ranking for seven consecutive seasons. He was runner-up to Dennis Taylor in one of snooker's most famous matches, the 1985 World Championship final, which ended in a dramatic black-ball conclusion that attracted 18.5 million viewers, still the largest British television audience for any broadcast after midnight and any broadcast on BBC Two.
As well as his six world titles, Davis won the UK Championship six times and the Masters three times for a total of 15 Triple Crown titles, placing him third behind Ronnie O'Sullivan (23 titles) and Stephen Hendry (18). During the 1987–88 season, he became the first player to win all three Triple Crown events in a single season, a feat matched by only two other players—Hendry and Mark Williams. He holds the record for the most professional titles overall, with 84 individual wins, or 98 including team and pro–am competition (see tables below). His career total of 28 ranking titles places him fourth behind O'Sullivan (41 titles), Hendry (36) and John Higgins (31). Davis became the first player to make an officially recognised maximum break in professional competition—at the 1982 Classic—and he was also the first to earn £1 million in career prize money. (Full article...) -
Image 2The 2019 World Pool Masters was a nine-ball pool tournament which took place in Gibraltar from 29 to 31 March 2019. It was the 26th edition of the World Pool Masters invitational tournament organised by Matchroom Sport. The event contained increased participation from 16 to 24 players, and increased total prize fund to $100,000. Spaniard David Alcaide won the event, defeating Greece's Alexander Kazakis in the final 9–8, doubling the final ball the length of the table to win. The reigning champion was Dutchman Niels Feijen who defeated Shane Van Boening of the United States in the previous year's final to win the title for the second time in his career. Feijen was defeated in the opening round by Alcaide. (Full article...)
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Mark Anthony Selby MBE (born 19 June 1983) is an English professional snooker player. Ranked world number one on multiple occasions, he has won a total of 22 ranking titles, placing him eighth on the all-time list of ranking tournament winners. He is a four-time World Snooker Champion, and has won the Masters three times and the UK Championship twice for a total of nine Triple Crown titles, putting him on a par with John Higgins, and behind only Ronnie O’Sullivan (23), Stephen Hendry (18) and Steve Davis (15).
After winning the England Under-15 Championship in 1998, Selby turned professional in 1999, aged 16. He made his Crucible debut in 2005, and reached his first World Championship final in 2007, when he was runner-up to John Higgins. He won his first major title at the 2008 Masters, and his first ranking title at the 2008 Welsh Open. Between 2014 and 2017, he won the World Championship three times in four years. He first became world number one in September 2011, and held onto the top ranking position for just over four years between February 2015 and March 2019. He has compiled more than 800 century breaks in professional competition, including five maximum breaks, one of which is the only one to have been made during the final of the World Championships. (Full article...) -
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Stephen Maguire (born 13 March 1981) is a Scottish professional snooker player. He has won six major ranking tournaments, including the 2004 UK Championship, and has twice since reached the finals of that event. Maguire turned professional in 1998 after winning the IBSF World Snooker Championship. He was in the top 16 of the snooker world rankings for 11 consecutive years, from 2005 to 2016, twice reaching world no. 2. He is a prolific break-builder, having compiled over 500 century breaks, including three maximums. (Full article...) -
Image 5The 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...) -
Image 6The 2019 Northern Ireland Open (officially the 2019 19.com Northern Ireland Open) was a professional snooker tournament that took place from 11 to 17 November 2019 at the Waterfront Hall in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The fourth edition of the Northern Ireland Open, it was the sixth ranking event of the 2019–20 snooker season, the second tournament of the Home Nations Series. Featuring a prize fund of £405,000, the winner received £70,000. The event was broadcast on Eurosport and Quest domestically and was sponsored by betting company 19.com.
The defending champion was Judd Trump, who had defeated Ronnie O'Sullivan 9–7 in the 2018 final. The pair both reached the final in 2019, with Trump successfully defending the title, defeating O'Sullivan by the same scoreline. Stuart Bingham scored the highest break of the tournament, compiling a maximum break in the first frame of his first round match with Lu Ning, the sixth of his career. (Full article...) -
Image 7The World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA) is the governing body of professional snooker and English billiards. It is headquartered in Bristol, England. Founded as the Professional Billiard Players Association (PBPA) in 1946, with Joe Davis as chairman, it was revived in 1968 after some years of inactivity and renamed the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association in 1970. Its current chairman is Jason Ferguson.
The WPBSA devises and publishes the official rules of the two sports. It promotes their global development at the grassroots, amateur, and professional levels; enforces conduct regulations and disciplines players who breach them; and works to combat corruption, such as by investigating betting irregularities. Additionally, it is involved in coaching development and the training of referees. (Full article...) -
Image 8The 2020 World Grand Prix (officially the 2020 Coral World Grand Prix) was a professional snooker tournament which took place from 3 to 9 February 2020 in the Centaur at Cheltenham Racecourse in Cheltenham, England. It was the eleventh ranking event of the 2019–20 snooker season, and the first of three Coral Cup tournaments. The 2020 edition of the World Grand Prix was sponsored by the betting company Coral. The event had 32 participants, with players qualifying by virtue of their ranking points during the 2019–20 season. It had a prize fund of £380,000, with £100,000 going to the winner.
The defending champion was Judd Trump, who had beaten Ali Carter 10–6 in the 2019 final. Trump was defeated, 3–4, in the second round by Kyren Wilson. Neil Robertson won the tournament for the first time (his 18th ranking title) with a 10–8 victory against Graeme Dott in the final. It was the third consecutive final in the season for Robertson, who lost just one match in the event. It had 32 century breaks, with the highest a 142 by Robertson in the final. (Full article...) -
Image 9The 2019 Paul Hunter Classic was a professional non-ranking invitational snooker tournament. The event took place between 24 and 25 August 2019 at the Stadthalle in Fürth, Germany. The tournament was the 2019 edition of the Paul Hunter Classic first held in 2004 as the Grand Prix Fürth. The tournament is named in honour of snooker professional, Paul Hunter who won the 2004 event and died in 2006. The event featured a 16-player bracket with a qualification tournament that was held in Nuremberg, Germany. As the tournament was dropped as a ranking event, independent promoters Dragonstars Event Management promoted the event providing prize money for the tournament.
Kyren Wilson was the defending champion, having defeated Peter Ebdon 4–2 in the 2018 final. Barry Hawkins won the title 4–3 defeating Wilson in the final. Wison lead 3–2 and required one frame to win the title, he was one ball from winning but lost the frame 64–65 and incredibly Hawkins won the decider to win the title. The event also featured an exhibition Speed Snooker Cup tournament which ran concurrently with the main event, which was won by Gary Wilson. Barry Hawkins scored the highest break of the event, a 120 in the third round of the final. (Full article...) -
Image 10The 1952 World Snooker Championship was a snooker tournament held between 25 February and 8 March 1952 at Houldsworth Hall, in Manchester, England. The event featured only two entrants – Australian Horace Lindrum and New Zealander Clark McConachy. Due to a dispute between the Professional Billiards Players' Association (PBPA) and the Billiards Association and Control Council (BACC), most players withdrew from the event. The BACC thought the championship was primarily about honour, and financial consideration should come second, whilst the PBPA disagreed. The PBPA established an alternative 'world championship' called the PBPA Snooker Championship which would later become the official world championship as the World Professional Match-play Championship.
The competition was played as one continual match, held over 145 frames. Lindrum won the match, taking a winning 73–37 lead early on the 10th day and won 94–49. In winning the event, Lindrum became the first player from outside the British Isles to gain victory in the tournament, and the only one of four players to do so, with Cliff Thorburn in 1980, Neil Robertson in 2010, and Luca Brecel in 2023. The status of the event is debated, with some historians only counting Thorburn's, Robertson's & Brecel's wins due to the field of just two players. (Full article...)
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Image 1Historic 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 2A player racking the balls (from Pool (cue sports))
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Image 4alt=Brown snooker ball (from Snooker)
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Image 5alt=Blue snooker ball (from Snooker)
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Image 6alt=Pink snooker ball (from Snooker)
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Image 7Dutch pool player Niels Feijen at the 2008 European Pool Championship (from Pool (cue sports))
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Image 8The Family Remy by Januarius Zick, c. 1776, featuring billiards among other parlour activities (from Carom billiards)
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Image 9A complete set of snooker balls (from Snooker)
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Image 10Balkline table with standard markings (from Carom billiards)
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Image 11A 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 12Paul Gauguin's 1888 painting Night Café at Arles includes a depiction of French billiards (from Carom billiards)
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Image 13alt=Green snooker ball (from Snooker)
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Image 14alt=Black snooker ball (from Snooker)
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Image 15alt=Yellow snooker ball (from Snooker)
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Image 17alt=Red snooker ball (from Snooker)
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Image 19A sliding scoreboard, some blocks of cue-tip chalk, white chalk-board chalk, and two cue sticks (from Snooker)
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Image 21Illustration 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 23A full-size snooker table set up for the start of a game (from Snooker)
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Image 25A pool table diagram (from Pool (cue sports))
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Image 27A 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 28Ronnie O'Sullivan has won the World Championship seven times in the 21st century. (from Snooker)
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Cue sports portal The rules of games in italics are standardized by international sanctioning bodies. |
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