Portal:Cue sports
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The Cue Sports Portal
![A player is preparing for a shot in 8-ball](http://chped.net/https/upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/29/Billiards_and_snookers.jpg/225px-Billiards_and_snookers.jpg)
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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 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...) -
Image 2Masako Katsura (桂 マサ子, Katsura Masako, listen; 7 March 1913 – 20 December 1995), nicknamed "Katsy" and sometimes called the "First Lady of Billiards", was a Japanese carom billiards player who was most active in the 1950s. She was the first woman to compete and place among the best in the male-dominated world of professional billiards. First learning the game from her brother-in-law and then under the tutelage of Japanese champion Kinrey Matsuyama, Katsura became Japan's only female professional player. In competition in Japan, she took second place in the country's national three-cushion billiards championship three times. In exhibition she was noted for running 10,000 points at the game of straight rail.
After marrying a U.S. Army non-commissioned officer in 1950, Katsura emigrated to the United States in 1951. There she was invited to play in the 1952 U.S.-sponsored World Three-Cushion Championship, ultimately taking seventh place at that competition. Katsura was the first woman ever to be included in any world billiards tournament. Her fame cemented, Katsura went on an exhibition tour of the United States with eight-time world champion Welker Cochran, and later with 51-time world champion Willie Hoppe. In 1953 and 1954, she again competed for the world three-cushion crown, taking fifth and fourth places respectively. (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...) -
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The 2017 World Snooker Championship (officially the 2017 Betfred World Snooker Championship) was a professional snooker tournament that took place from 15 April to 1 May 2017 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. It was the 19th and final ranking event of the 2016–17 season which followed the China Open. It was the 41st consecutive year that the World Snooker Championship had been held at the Crucible.
The winner of the event was the defending champion and world number one Mark Selby, who defeated John Higgins 18–15 in the final. Selby won despite having fallen 4–10 behind in the second session of the match. Selby defeated Ding Junhui 17–15 in the semi-finals whilst Higgins defeated Barry Hawkins 17–8 to reach the final. This was Selby's third World Championship win; he had also won the tournament in the 2014 and 2016 tournaments. (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 6The 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 7Four-time world champion Mark Selby playing at a practice table during the 2012 Masters tournament
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...) -
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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...) -
Image 9The 2021 Masters (officially the 2021 Betfred Masters) was a professional non-ranking snooker tournament that took place between 10 and 17 January 2021 at the Marshall Arena in Milton Keynes, England. It was the 47th staging of the Masters tournament, which was first held in 1975, and the second of three Triple Crown events in the 2020–21 season, following the 2020 UK Championship and preceding the 2021 World Snooker Championship. The top sixteen players from the snooker world rankings were invited to compete in a knockout tournament. The World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association organised the tournament, which was broadcast by the BBC and Eurosport in Europe. The event was sponsored by sports betting company Betfred. It was played behind closed doors because of COVID-19 restrictions in the United Kingdom. Two players, world number one Judd Trump and Jack Lisowski, withdrew from the event after testing positive for COVID-19.
The defending champion, Stuart Bingham, had defeated Ali Carter 10–8 in the previous year's final. Bingham lost 6–5 to Yan Bingtao in the semi-finals. Yan (one of three debutants at the event, alongside Thepchaiya Un-Nooh and Gary Wilson) met John Higgins in the final. Yan completed a 10–8 victory to win his first Triple Crown tournament. As the winner of the event, Yan was awarded £250,000 from the total prize pool of £725,000. The highest break of the event was a 145 made by Higgins in his quarter-final win over Ronnie O'Sullivan which earned him £15,000. (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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Sang Chun Lee (Korean: 이상천; January 15, 1954 – October 19, 2004), most commonly known simply as Sang Lee, was a Korean-born American professional three-cushion billiards player and world champion. (Full article...) -
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World Champion professional trick shot artist Mike Massey setting up a trick shot.
A trick shot (also trickshot or trick-shot) is a shot played on a billiards table (most often a pool table, though snooker tables are also used), which seems unlikely or impossible or requires significant skill. Trick shots frequently involve the balls organized in ways that do not correspond to normal play, such as balls being in a straight line, or use props such as extra cues or a triangle that would not be allowed on the table during a game. As an organized cue sports discipline, trick shot competition is known as artistic pool. (Full article...) -
Image 3Buddy at the 2003 US Open
Cecil P. "Buddy" Hall (born May 29, 1945, in Metropolis, Illinois) has been an American professional pool player for three decades and is considered one of the best nine-ball players of all time. The International Pool Tour heralds Hall as a "living pool legend." He is nicknamed "The Rifleman" for his accuracy and had been a consistent top player for over two decades and virtually unbeaten when playing "money matches".
Many players and pundits consider him to be one of the most fundamentally solid 9-Ball players of all time, heralding him with the best cue ball control of any player.
Hall has been credited for creating the "clock system" which is a technique for where to hit the cue-ball, using the clock as a mechanism for where to aim. (Full article...) -
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Robert Leo Byrne (/bɜːrn/; May 22, 1930 – December 6, 2016) was an American author and Billiard Congress of America Hall of Fame instructor of pool and carom billiards. (Full article...) -
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Three-cushion billiards, also called three-cushion carom, is a form of carom billiards. The object of the game is to carom the cue ball off both object balls while contacting the rail cushions at least three times before contacting the second object ball. A point is scored for each successful carom. In most shots the cue ball hits the object balls one time each, although hitting them any number of times is allowed as long as both are hit. The cue ball may contact the cushions before or after hitting the first object ball. It does not have to contact three different cushions as long as it has been in contact with any cushion at least three times in total. (Full article...) -
Image 6Side Pocket 3 (Japanese: サイドポケット3, Hepburn: Saido Poketto 3) is a Japan-exclusive pocket billiards video game for the Sega Saturn and PlayStation. Like its predecessor, Side Pocket 2, it features the in-game likeness of a real-life professional pool player. In this case, it's JPBA member, Kyoko Sone. The game is the third and final installment of the Side Pocket series. (Full article...)
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Image 7Ralph 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 8The Billiards Section of Futebol Clube do Porto is a professional billiards team based in Porto, Portugal, founded in 1950. The team competes in the Portuguese Billiards League and in European Championships, in both carom billiards (three-cushion) and pool (eight-ball and nine-ball) events. They play their home games in the former headquarters of the club and they also have a billiards school, the first in the country.
The most important achievements in this section history were the four silver medals won in 1998–99, 2007–08, 2011–12 and 2015–16 in the European Cup, having also achieved six bronze medals in this competition in 1971–72, 1995–96, 2004–05, 2010–11, 2013–14 and 2014–15.
In Portugal, the men's and women's squads have achieved many championships, as well as many other trophies making the section one of the most titled in the country. One of the greatest players of this section, Alípio Jorge Fernandes, received the Galardão de Ouro in representation of the president Pinto da Costa, a trophy attributed to the club because of its accomplishments. (Full article...) -
Image 9Erwin Rudolph (December 30, 1893 – May 19, 1957) was an American pocket billiards player from Cleveland, Ohio and a five-time world champion. One of his great feats was running 125 points in 32 minutes (now eclipsed). (Full article...)
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Jackie Gleason as Fats in The Hustler (1961)
Minnesota Fats, or George Hegerman, is a fictional pool hustler created by American novelist Walter Tevis.
The character appears in Tevis' novels The Hustler (1959) and The Color of Money (1984). Jackie Gleason portrayed him in the 1961 film adaptation of The Hustler. Though a real pool hustler, Rudolf Wanderone, who began calling himself "Minnesota Fats" in 1961, claimed to be the inspiration, Tevis denied that claim and insisted that "Minnesota Fats" was fictional. (Full article...)
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![](http://chped.net/https/upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/44/Nuvola_apps_filetypes.svg/47px-Nuvola_apps_filetypes.svg.png)
- ... that at the 1978 World Snooker Championship, Fred Davis reached the semi-finals at the age of 64?
- ... 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 John Spencer won a World Snooker Championship on his first attempt in 1969?
- ... that the 1947 World Snooker Championship was the first world snooker championship where the winner wasn't Joe Davis?
- ... that Gary Wilson threw his snooker cue to the floor in anger at the 2022 UK Championship?
- ... that Mark Williams travelled for more than 13 hours to be a last-minute replacement at the 2022 Hong Kong Masters?
- ... that referee Jan Verhaas was informed of an error he made at the 2022 Masters by a member of the crowd?
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Image 1The 2001 Scottish Masters (known as the 2001 Regal Scottish Masters for sponsorship reasons) was a professional non-ranking snooker tournament which took place at the Thistle Hotel in Glasgow, Scotland, from 18 to 23 September 2001. It was the first time the tournament was played in Glasgow since the 1989 edition. The competition was the second of four invitational World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA) events of the 2001–02 season. It was broadcast on BBC Scotland and Eurosport and was sponsored by the cigarette brand Regal.
John Higgins, the top-ranked Scottish player, won the tournament, defeating the defending champion and world title holder Ronnie O'Sullivan 9–6 in the final. It was the first time that Higgins had won the competition it was the 22nd ranking tournament victory of his career. He earned £63,000 from a prize fund pool of £200,000. O'Sullivan made the highest break of the competition of 134 in his semi-final victory over Marco Fu. (Full article...) -
Image 2Gerda Hofstätter Gergerson (born 9 February 1971), nicknamed "G-Force", is an Austrian professional pool player. Hofstätter won the WPA World Nine-ball Championship in 1995. She is a winner at the European Pool Championship on nine occasions, and won the Austrian national Championship seventeen times. Hofstätter is a two-time Hall of Fame inductee being voted into both the Women's Professional Billiard Association and Billiard Congress of America Hall of Fames in the Greatest Players Category. Hofstätter was the Austrian Sportswoman of the Year for Carinthia in 1993. Hofstätter played on the WPBA Tour until her retirement, doing so from 1993 onward. (Full article...)
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The 2018 UK Championship (officially the 2018 Betway UK Championship) was a professional ranking snooker tournament, that took place from 27 November to 9 December 2018. It was the ninth ranking tournament and the first Triple Crown event of the 2018/2019 season. The event was broadcast on BBC Sport and Eurosport in the United Kingdom.
Ronnie O'Sullivan, the defending champion, defeated Mark Allen 10–6 in the final, winning his 7th UK Championship and his 34th ranking event overall. In doing so, he became the first player since Stephen Hendry in 1996 to successfully defend the UK title. O'Sullivan broke Hendry's record for the most Triple Crown titles (18), Steve Davis's record of UK Championship titles (6) and became the second player to defend all Triple Crown tournaments at least once, after Hendry. The win was 25 years after his first UK Championship title as a 17 year old in 1993. (Full article...) -
Image 4The 2002 Scottish Masters (known as the 2002 Regal Scottish Masters for sponsorship reasons) was a professional non-ranking snooker tournament which took place at the Thistle Hotel in Glasgow, Scotland, from 24 to 29 September. It was the final edition of the tournament, as it later lost its sponsorship by the cigarette brand Regal. It was the first of two invitational World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA) competitions in the 2002–03 season. The host broadcaster was BBC Scotland.
Ronnie O'Sullivan, a former world champion, won the tournament, defeating the defending champion John Higgins 9–4 in the final. It was the third time that O'Sullivan had won the Scottish Masters in his career, and he was awarded £65,000 from a prize fund pool of £205,000. In the semi-finals O'Sullivan defeated world number six Stephen Hendry 6–3 and Higgins beat Stephen Lee 6–4; Lee made the tournament's highest break of 139 in his loss. (Full article...) -
Image 5The 2006 World Cup of Pool (also known as the 2006 PartyPoker.com World Cup of Pool for the purposes of sponsorship) was a professional nine-ball pool competition, the first World Cup of Pool, a scotch doubles knockout championship representing 32 national teams. The event was held at the Newport Centre in Newport, Wales, from 22 to 27 August 2006. The event was held as a single-elimination tournament, for a total prize fund of $250,000 with $60,000 being awarded to the winner. The tournament was organised by Matchroom Sport, sponsored by poker website Partypoker, and broadcast on Sky TV.
The event was won by the Filipino team of Efren Reyes and Francisco Bustamante who defeated the American duo of Earl Strickland and Rodney Morris 13–5 in the final. The event saw multiple world pool champions in the field, as well as snooker world champions in Steve Davis and Ronnie O'Sullivan. The unseeded Vietnamese team of Nguyen Thanh Nam and Lương Chí Dũng reached the semi-finals, where they won $8,000 each, three-times the country's national average wage. (Full article...) -
Image 6The 2019 European Pool Championships (also known as the 2019 Dynamic Billiards European Pool Championships) was a series of professional pool championships that took place at the Best Western Premier in Treviso, Italy. The event was played between 26 April and 8 May 2019 and was the 39th edition of the European Pool Championships that were first held in 1980. The championships saw events for men, women, under 23s and wheelchairs across five disciplines; straight pool, eight-ball, nine-ball, ten-ball and a team event.
Russian players won the most medals over the course of the series, with seven – winning three events. Russia's Kristina Tkach was the most successful female player, winning two events, losing only once in the final of the ten-ball event. Jasmin Ouschan won the nine-ball event, with a whitewash over Nataliya Seroshtan. Finland's Jouni Tähti was the most successful wheelchair player, winning two of the three handicapped events. (Full article...) -
Image 7Herbert John Pulman (12 December 1923 – 25 December 1998) was an English professional snooker player who was the World Snooker Champion from 1957 to 1968. He first won the title at the 1957 Championship and retained it across seven challenges from 1964 to 1968, three of them against Fred Davis and two against Rex Williams. When the tournament reverted to a knockout event in 1969, he lost 18–25 in the first round to the eventual champion John Spencer. After finishing as runner-up to Ray Reardon in 1970, Pulman never again reached the final, although he was a losing semi-finalist in 1977.
He turned professional in 1946, shortly after winning the English Amateur Championship, and achieved three News of the World Snooker Tournament titles, in 1954, 1957 and 1958. An emotional player, he was prone to venting his frustration and missing important shots. He generally played attacking snooker in his early career, but he made more use of safety tactics in the 1970s. (Full article...) -
Image 8The 2021 British Open (officially the 2021 Matchroom.live British Open) was a professional snooker event played from 16 to 22 August 2021 at the Morningside Arena, Leicester, England. It was the 2021 edition of the British Open event, and the first since the 2004 British Open. It was the second ranking event of the 2021–22 snooker season, following the 2021 Championship League and preceding the 2021 Northern Ireland Open. It was broadcast by ITV Sport in the UK, and sponsored by Matchroom Sport. The winner received £100,000 from a total prize pool of £470,000.
All rounds in the tournament were played after a random draw made under a single-elimination tournament format with no seeded players. The first four rounds, from the last 128 to the last 16, were played as best-of-five frame matches, the quarter-finals and semi-finals as best-of-seven-frame matches, and the final played as the best-of-eleven frames. John Higgins, the defending champion from 2004, lost 1–3 to Ricky Walden in the third round. Mark Williams defeated Gary Wilson 6–4 in the final to win the 24th ranking title of his career. The event featured 32 century breaks, including two maximum breaks. Higgins made his 12th maximum break in professional competition in the first frame of his first-round win over Alexander Ursenbacher, and Ali Carter made his third maximum break in the second frame of his fourth-round match against Elliot Slessor. (Full article...) -
Image 9The 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...) -
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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...)
General images - load new batch
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Image 1alt=Black snooker ball (from Snooker)
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Image 3alt=Pink snooker ball (from Snooker)
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Image 4alt=Red snooker ball (from Snooker)
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Image 5A 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 6A sliding scoreboard, some blocks of cue-tip chalk, white chalk-board chalk, and two cue sticks (from Snooker)
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Image 8Ronnie O'Sullivan has won the World Championship seven times in the 21st century. (from Snooker)
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Image 9alt=Brown snooker ball (from Snooker)
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Image 10The Family Remy by Januarius Zick, c. 1776, featuring billiards among other parlour activities (from Carom billiards)
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Image 11Dutch pool player Niels Feijen at the 2008 European Pool Championship (from Pool (cue sports))
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Image 12A full-size snooker table set up for the start of a game (from Snooker)
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Image 13alt=Blue snooker ball (from Snooker)
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Image 14Historic 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 15Paul Gauguin's 1888 painting Night Café at Arles includes a depiction of French billiards (from Carom billiards)
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Image 16A complete set of snooker balls (from Snooker)
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Image 17alt=Yellow snooker ball (from Snooker)
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Image 18A player racking the balls (from Pool (cue sports))
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Image 19alt=Green snooker ball (from Snooker)
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Image 22A 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 23A pool table diagram (from Pool (cue sports))
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Image 25Illustration 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 27Balkline table with standard markings (from Carom billiards)
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![]() The rules of games in italics are standardized by international sanctioning bodies. |
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Active professional snooker tournaments | |
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