Portal:Cue sports
Portal maintenance status: (March 2022)
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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 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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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...) -
Image 3The 2014 World Snooker Championship (officially the 2014 Dafabet World Snooker Championship) was a professional snooker tournament that took place from 19 April to 5 May 2014 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. It was the 38th consecutive year that the World Snooker Championship had been held at the Crucible. The tournament was also the last ranking event of the 2013–14 snooker season. The event was sponsored by Dafabet for the first time. A qualifying tournament was held from 8 to 16 April 2014 at the Ponds Forge International Sports Centre in Sheffield for 16 players, who met 16 seeded participants at the main championships.
Ronnie O'Sullivan was the defending champion, having won the previous year's event by defeating Barry Hawkins in the final. Mark Selby won the 2014 event to capture his first world title by defeating O'Sullivan 18–14 in the final. This was Selby's fourth ranking title, also completing the Triple Crown of World Championship, UK Championship, and Masters titles. Neil Robertson compiled the highest break of the tournament, a 140, and scored his 100th century break of the season in his quarter-final win over Judd Trump. The event featured a prize fund of £1,214,000, the winner receiving £300,000. (Full article...) -
Image 4The 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...) -
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The sport of snooker has utilised a world rankings system since 1975, used to seed players on the World Snooker Tour for tournaments. Originally rankings were published once a year, at the culmination of the season, however, since 2010, the rankings have been changed to be updated after every ranking tournament. The number one ranking has been held by twelve players; Ray Reardon was the first to hold the position, and was followed by Cliff Thorburn, Steve Davis, Stephen Hendry, John Higgins, Mark Williams, Ronnie O'Sullivan, Neil Robertson, Mark Selby, Judd Trump, Ding Junhui and Mark Allen.
Hendry held the number one position for the longest time under the annual format, holding it for nine years in total. Since it changed to a rolling format in 2010, Selby has held the rank longer than anyone else. (Full article...) -
Image 6The 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 7The 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 8The 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 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 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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Image 1William Joseph Mosconi (/mɒˈskoʊni/; June 27, 1913 – September 17, 1993) was an American professional pool player from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Mosconi is widely considered one of the greatest pool players of all time. Between the years of 1941 and 1957, he won the World Straight Pool Championship nineteen times. For most of the 20th century, his name was essentially synonymous with pool in North America – he was nicknamed "Mr. Pocket Billiards" – and he was among the first Billiard Congress of America Hall of Fame inductees. Mosconi pioneered and regularly employed numerous trick shots, set many records, and helped to popularize pool as a national recreation activity.
During the 1940s and 1950s, the pocket billiards game most often played in competition was called straight pool, or 14.1 continuous, a form of pool considered by most top players to be more difficult than today's fast tournament game nine-ball. Mosconi set the officially-recognized straight pool high run world record of 526 consecutive balls in 1954. (Full article...) -
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Alfredo de Oro (28 April 1863 – 23 April 1948) was a Cuban professional carom billiards and pool player who several times held the world title in both three-cushion billiards and straight pool simultaneously. He was posthumously inducted into the Billiard Congress of America's Hall of Fame in 1967, the first non-American to receive the honor. He was ranked number 4 on the Billiards Digest 50 Greatest Players of the Century. (Full article...) -
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Kelly Teresa Fisher MBE (born 25 August 1978) is an English professional pool, snooker and English billiards player. (Full article...) -
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Graeme Dott (born 12 May 1977) is a Scottish professional snooker player and snooker coach from Larkhall. He turned professional in 1994 and first entered the top 16 in 2001. He has won two ranking titles, the 2006 World Snooker Championship and the 2007 China Open, and was runner-up in the World Championships of 2004 and 2010. He reached number 2 in the world rankings in 2007, but a subsequent episode of clinical depression seriously affected his form, causing him to drop to number 28 for the 2009–10 season. He then recovered his form, regained his top-16 ranking, and reached a third World Championship final. In 2011, he published his autobiography, Frame of Mind: The Autobiography of the World Snooker Champion. (Full article...) -
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Yan Bingtao (Chinese: 颜丙涛; born 16 February 2000) is a Chinese former professional snooker player who is currently serving a five-year ban from professional competition after committing a range of match-fixing offences. He rose to prominence by winning the ISBF World Snooker Championship, the sport's world amateur title, in 2014 at age 14, which made him the tournament's youngest ever winner. He turned professional in 2016.
Aged 17 years and 284 days, Yan became the youngest player ever to contest a ranking final when he faced Mark Williams at the 2017 Northern Ireland Open, but lost in a deciding frame. Yan claimed his first ranking title at the 2019 Riga Masters, becoming the third Chinese player, after Ding Junhui and Liang Wenbo, to win a ranking event. He made his Masters debut at the 2021 event, where he defeated John Higgins 10–8 in the final to win his first Triple Crown title. Aged 20, Yan became the youngest Masters winner since then-19-year-old Ronnie O'Sullivan won it in 1995.
In December 2022, the WPBSA suspended Yan from the professional tour amid a match-fixing investigation. Following an independent disciplinary tribunal, he was banned from competing professionally until 11 December 2027. (Full article...) -
Image 6The World Professional Match-play Championship was a professional snooker tournament established in 1952 as an alternative to the professional World Snooker Championship by some of the professional players, following a dispute with the Billiards Association and Control Council, the sport's governing body. Fred Davis won the first five editions of the tournament, but didn't participate in 1957, when John Pulman won. After this, the event was discontinued due to a decline in the popularity of snooker.
A tournament with the same name was staged in 1976. Eddie Charlton promoted the event in Melbourne with World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA) approval. Charlton defeated Ray Reardon 31–24 in the final. The events from 1952 to 1957 are now regarded as editions of the world championships, but the 1976 one is not. (Full article...) -
Image 7The 2019 WPA World Nine-ball Championship was a nine-ball pool championship, which took place from December 13 to 17, 2019 at the al-Arabi Sports Club in Doha, Qatar. The defending champion was Germany's Joshua Filler, who won the 2018 event defeating Carlo Biado in the final 13–10.
Russian Fedor Gorst won the event, defeating Taipei's Chang Jung-lin in the final 13–11. (Full article...) -
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Sinuca brasileira (Portuguese for Brazilian snooker), often simply called sinuca, is a cue sport played on a snooker table, using only one red ball instead of snooker's fifteen, with the normal six colours of the standard set of snooker balls. Each ball carries the same basic point value as in snooker. As with other pocket billiards games, a white cue ball is used to pot the red and other coloured balls. The game is played almost exclusively in Brazil and is little known outside this region. (Full article...) -
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James Rempe (born November 4, 1947, in Scranton, Pennsylvania, US) is an American professional pocket billiards (pool) player, and was inducted into the Billiard Congress of America's Hall of Fame in 2002. (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...)
Did you know (auto-generated) - load new batch
- ... that Turkish carom billiards champion Güzin Müjde Karakaşlı grew up playing volleyball for about 12 years?
- ... 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?
- ... that Fraser Patrick likened playing in the 2019 Q School to being in a boxing match with Anthony Joshua?
- ... 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 John Spencer won a World Snooker Championship on his first attempt in 1969?
- ... 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?
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Image 1The 1979 UK Championship (officially the 1979 Coral UK Championship) was a professional non-ranking snooker tournament that took place between 19 November and 1 December 1979 at the Guild Hall in Preston, England. This was the third edition of the UK Championship that would later become part of snooker's Triple Crown. The event was sponsored by Coral for the second year in a row.
John Virgo won the championship, in his only major tournament win, by defeating Terry Griffiths 14–13 in the final, despite being deducted two frames for arriving late. The defending champion, Doug Mountjoy, was defeated 5–9 by Steve Davis in the opening round. Griffiths compiled the tournament's highest break of 119 in his semi-final win over Bill Werbeniuk. The last session of the final was broadcast by the BBC on their Grandstand programme; however, due to a strike by BBC personnel, the final frames of the match – including Virgo being awarded the championship – were never broadcast or recorded. (Full article...) -
Image 2The 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 3The 2002 LG Cup was a professional snooker tournament held from 5 to 13 October 2002, at the Guild Hall, in Preston, Lancashire, England. It was the second year the event was known as the LG Cup and the 21st overall staging of the competition. Sponsored by the Korean multinational conglomerate LG, the tournament was the first of eight World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA) ranking events in the 2002–03 snooker season and was televised in the United Kingdom on the BBC.
Chris Small, who has the spinal condition ankylosing spondylitis, was a 150/1 outsider when he won the tournament by defeating fellow Scot Alan McManus nine frames to five (9–5) in the final. It was Small's only major ranking tournament title of his career as he retired from his disease three years later. In the semi-finals Small beat Jimmy Michie 6–2 and McManus defeated Steve Davis 6–2. Stephen Lee compiled the tournament's highest break of a 141 total clearance in his second round match against Ryan Day. The tournament preceded the second ranking event of the season, the British Open. (Full article...) -
Image 4Herbert 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 5The 2005 Masters (officially the 2005 Rileys Club Masters) was the 2005 edition of the non-ranking Masters professional snooker tournament. It was held from 13 to 20 February 2005 at the Wembley Conference Centre, London. The tournament was the 31st staging of the competition and was the sixth of nine World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA) main tour events in the 2004/2005 season. The tournament was broadcast in the United Kingdom on the BBC and by Eurosport in Europe.
Ronnie O'Sullivan, the 2004 world champion, won the tournament, defeating 1999 Masters winner John Higgins ten frames to three in the final to claim his first Masters tournament victory since 1995. It was O'Sullivan's second Masters title in his fifth appearance in the final. O'Sullivan became the sixth player in Masters history to win the tournament more than once. In the semi-finals Higgins beat Peter Ebdon 6–3 and O'Sullivan defeated Jimmy White 6–1. Ding Junhui made the tournament's highest break of 141 in his first round match against Ken Doherty. The Masters preceded the Irish Masters and followed the Malta Cup. (Full article...) -
Image 6Raymond Reardon MBE (born 8 October 1932) is a retired Welsh professional snooker player. He turned professional in 1967 and dominated the sport in the 1970s, winning the World Snooker Championship six times and more than a dozen other tournaments. Reardon was World Champion in 1970, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, and 1978, and runner-up in 1982. He won the inaugural Pot Black tournament in 1969, the 1976 Masters, and the 1982 Professional Players Tournament.
Reardon was the first player to be ranked "world number one" when world rankings were introduced during the 1976–77 season, a position that he held for the next five years. He regained the top-ranking position in 1982, after which his form declined and he dropped out of the elite top-16 ranked players after the 1986–87 season. He remained one of snooker's top players into his 50s, setting several records. In 1978, Reardon became the oldest world snooker champion, aged 45 years and 203 days, a record that lasted until 2022 when Ronnie O'Sullivan won the title, aged 46 years and 148 days. Reardon also became the oldest player to win a ranking event, which he accomplished in 1982, aged 50 years and 14 days. He never achieved a maximum break in tournament play; his highest break in competition was 146. Reardon retired from professional competition in 1991. (Full article...) -
Image 7Desmond Rex Williams BEM (born 20 July 1933) is an English retired professional billiards and snooker player. He was the second player to make an official maximum break in snooker, achieving this in an exhibition match in December 1965. Williams won the World Professional Billiards Championship from Clark McConachy in 1968, the first time that the title had been contested since 1951. Williams retained the title in several challenge matches in the 1970s and, after losing it to Fred Davis in 1980, regained it from 1982 to 1983.
He played a leading role in the re-establishment of the World Snooker Championship on a challenge basis in 1964, and lost twice to John Pulman, once in a single match and once in a series of matches played in South Africa. When the Championship reverted to being a knockout from 1969, he reached the semi-finals three times. In 1968 he initiated the revival of the Professional Billiards Players Association (known as the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association from 1970). He chaired the association, barring a few weeks in 1983, until 1987, and again from 1997 to 1999. (Full article...) -
Image 8The 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...) -
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William Alexander Spinks Jr. (July 11, 1865 – January 15, 1933) was an American professional player of carom billiards in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was often referred to as W. A. Spinks, and occasionally Billy Spinks. In addition to being amateur Pacific Coast Billiards Champion several times, a world-champion contender in more than one cue sports discipline, and an exhibition player in Europe, he became the co-inventor (with William Hoskins) of modern billiard cue chalk in 1897.
He was originally (and again in retirement from the billiards circuit) a Californian, but spent much of his professional career in Chicago, Illinois. At his peak, his was a household name in American billiards; The New York Times ranked Spinks as one of "the most brilliant players among the veterans of the game", and he still holds the world record for points scored in a row (1,010) using a particular shot type. Aside from his billiards-playing career, he founded a lucrative sporting goods manufacturing business. He was both an oil company investor and director, and a flower- and fruit-farm operator and horticulturist, originator of the eponymous Spinks cultivar of avocado. (Full article...) -
Image 10The 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...)
General images - load new batch
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Image 1alt=Pink snooker ball (from Snooker)
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Image 2A sliding scoreboard, some blocks of cue-tip chalk, white chalk-board chalk, and two cue sticks (from Snooker)
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Image 4A full-size snooker table set up for the start of a game (from Snooker)
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Image 5The Family Remy by Januarius Zick, c. 1776, featuring billiards among other parlour activities (from Carom billiards)
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Image 6alt=Yellow snooker ball (from Snooker)
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Image 7A 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 8Paul Gauguin's 1888 painting Night Café at Arles includes a depiction of French billiards (from Carom billiards)
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Image 9A 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 10Historic 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 12alt=Green snooker ball (from Snooker)
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Image 13alt=Brown snooker ball (from Snooker)
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Image 14alt=Blue snooker ball (from Snooker)
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Image 16A complete set of snooker balls (from Snooker)
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Image 17Illustration 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 18A player racking the balls (from Pool (cue sports))
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Image 19Balkline table with standard markings (from Carom billiards)
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Image 20alt=Red snooker ball (from Snooker)
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Image 21Ronnie O'Sullivan has won the World Championship seven times in the 21st century. (from Snooker)
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Image 25Dutch pool player Niels Feijen at the 2008 European Pool Championship (from Pool (cue sports))
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Image 27A pool table diagram (from Pool (cue sports))
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Image 28alt=Black snooker ball (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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Early events | |
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Match-play | |
Challenges | |
Knock-outs | |
Crucible era | |
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Tournaments | |
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Active professional snooker tournaments | |
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Ranking events | |
Non-ranking events | |
Seniors events |
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Tours and series | |
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