m →top: use newer template Tag: AWB |
m fix Tag: Disambiguation links added |
||
Line 34: | Line 34: | ||
{{Box-header colour|color=#0a6c03|Related portals and projects}} |
{{Box-header colour|color=#0a6c03|Related portals and projects}} |
||
{{Related portals2|Sports |
{{Related portals2|Sports}} |
||
---- |
---- |
||
{{paragraph break}} |
{{paragraph break}} |
Revision as of 04:42, 18 June 2022
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...)
Featured articles - load new batch
-
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 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 3
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 4The 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...) -
Image 5
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 6Masako 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 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 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...) -
Image 9The 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 10
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...)
Selected articles - load new batch
-
Image 1The World Straight Pool Championship is a pool competition, that was held up until the game of Nine-ball became popularized in America. It was the most prestigious straight pool tournament up until the early 21st century, tournaments like the American 14.1 Straight Pool Championship and the European Pool Championship 14.1 that are still held annually, have gained prominence in recent years. During the tournament's early years, it was the only global professional title for straight pool (also known as 14.1 continuous). The event was revived in 2006, in part to restore the game's popularity in the United States. The World Straight Pool Championship was sanctioned by the World Pool-Billiard Association (WPA) in 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2010. The tournament continued unsanctioned from 2011 to 2019. Ralph Greenleaf & Willie Mosconi are the most successful players having both won the tournament on 19 occasions. The oldest player to win the tournament is Irving Crane at 59 years old at the time of his victory. The youngest player to win the tournament is Ralph Greenleaf at 20 years old at the time of his first victory. (Full article...)
-
Image 2
The English-originating version of eight-ball pool, also known as English pool, English eight-ball, blackball, or simply reds and yellows, is a pool game played with sixteen balls (a cue ball and fifteen usually unnumbered object balls) on a small pool table with six pockets. It originated in the United Kingdom and is played in the Commonwealth countries such as Australia and South Africa. In the UK and Ireland it is usually called simply "pool".
The English version of eight-ball has two main sets of playing rules used in professional play; those of the World Pool-Billiard Association (WPA), known as "blackball rules", and the code of the World Eightball Pool Federation (WEPF), known as "international rules". (Full article...) -
Image 3
Ian Burns (born 11 March 1985) is an English professional snooker player.
Burns turned professional after qualifying in his first attempt at the 2012 Q School and gained a two-year tour card for the 2012/13 and 2013/14 snooker seasons. He won four matches in the event, concluding with a 4–3 victory over veteran Rod Lawler to seal his card. He finished outside top 64 after the 2022-23 season but retained his tour card as a result of being one of the top 4 players outside that range to have the most amount of points on the one-year list. (Full article...) -
Image 4The ACUI Collegiate Pocket Billiards National Championship, in recent years known more specifically as the ACUI Collegiate Nine-ball National Championship, was an amateur United States annual pool competition for university and college students, organized by the Association of College Unions International (ACUI). It was founded in 1937, and was one of ACUI's longest-running programs. In June 2020, the ACUI made the decision to discontinue their National Collegiate Pocket Billiards program. (Full article...)
-
Image 5
Mika Immonen (born 17 December 1972) is a Finnish professional Hall of Fame pool player, nicknamed "The Iceman." (Full article...) -
Image 6William 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...) -
Image 7The World Pool-Billiard Association (WPA) is the international governing body for pool (pocket billiards). It was formed in 1987, and was initially headed by a provisional board of directors consisting of representatives from Australia, Americas, Africa, and Europe. As of 2023, the WPA president is Ishaun Singh of South Africa. It is an associate of the World Confederation of Billiards Sports (WCBS), the international umbrella organization that encompasses the major cue sports. WPA is headquartered in Gauteng, South Africa. (Full article...)
-
Image 8
Wu Jiaqing (simplified Chinese: 吴珈庆; traditional Chinese: 吳珈慶; pinyin: Wú Jiāqìng; born February 9, 1989) is a Taiwanese-born Chinese professional pool player. He is nicknamed the Taishan Shentong ("Little Genius from Taishan"). Since 2011, Wu switched from representing Chinese Taipei to representing the country of China. Previously known as Wu Chia-ching, the spelling of his name was changed upon moving to mainland China. (Full article...) -
Image 9
The World Snooker Championship is the longest-running and most prestigious tournament in professional snooker. It is also the richest, with total prize money of £2,395,000 in 2023, including £500,000 for the winner. First held in 1927, it is now one of the three tournaments (together with the UK Championship and the invitational Masters) that make up snooker's Triple Crown Series. The reigning world champion is Kyren Wilson.
Joe Davis dominated the tournament over its first two decades, winning the first 15 world championships before he retired undefeated after his final victory in 1946. The distinctive World Championship trophy, topped by a Greek shepherdess figurine, was acquired by Davis in 1926 for £19 and continues in use to this day. No tournaments were held between 1941 and 1945 due to World War II, or between 1952 and 1963 due to a dispute between the Professional Billiards Players' Association (PBPA) and the Billiards Association and Control Council (BACC). The PBPA held an unofficial alternative, the World Professional Match-play Championship, between 1952 and 1957. The official championship was revived on a challenge basis in 1964.
The World Snooker Championship reverted to a knockout tournament format in 1969, beginning what is now known as snooker's modern era. It has taken place annually since then, with every championship since 1977 staged at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield. Under a format that has remained largely unchanged since 1982, 32 players reach the Crucible each year; the top 16 players in the world rankings qualify automatically, while another 16 players win places through a qualification tournament. Only three qualifiers have ever won the tournament: Alex Higgins in 1972, Terry Griffiths in 1979, and Shaun Murphy in 2005. (Full article...) -
Image 10Edward Francis Charlton, AM (31 October 1929 – 7 November 2004) was an Australian professional snooker and English billiards player.* He remains the only player to have been world championship runner-up in both snooker and billiards without winning either title. He later became a successful marketer of sporting goods launching a popular brand of billiard room equipment bearing his name. (Full article...)
Did you know (auto-generated) - load new batch
- ... that the final of the 2009 IBSF women's snooker championship was interrupted so that drug tests could be conducted on the players?
- ... that the 1810s reign of Ioan Caragea introduced Wallachia to carom billiards, sugar sculptures, and an eponymous plague?
- ... 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 a snooker table used at the 2022 Turkish Masters was fixed with a car jack?
- ... that referee Jan Verhaas was informed of an error he made at the 2022 Masters by a member of the crowd?
- ... that after winning the 2024 Masters, snooker player Ronnie O'Sullivan is both the youngest and oldest winner of the tournament?
- ... that John Spencer won a World Snooker Championship on his first attempt in 1969?
- ... that Kyren Wilson won the first four frames in all of his snooker matches at the 2023 Tour Championship?
Related portals and projects
Good articles - load new batch
-
Image 1
Michaela Tabb (born 11 December 1967) is a Scottish snooker and pool referee. She established significant milestones for female officials in professional cue sports, beginning in pool, where she officiated at top tournaments such as the WPA World Nine-ball Championship and the Mosconi Cup. She qualified in 2001 to referee on the World Snooker Tour and was the sport's highest profile female referee for the next 14 years. She became the first woman to officiate at a professional ranking snooker tournament at the 2002 Welsh Open, and the first woman to referee a ranking tournament final at the 2007 Welsh Open. She is the only woman to have refereed the World Snooker Championship final, which she did twice, in 2009 and 2012.
Tabb left the professional snooker tour in March 2015 following a dispute with the sport's commercial arm, World Snooker Ltd, against which she brought a case alleging sex discrimination, unfair dismissal, and breach of contract. The parties reached an out-of-court settlement in September 2015, under which World Snooker Ltd paid Tabb an undisclosed financial sum. She has continued to referee at pool events and on the World Seniors Tour. (Full article...) -
Image 2
Dennis Taylor (born 19 January 1949) is a Northern Irish retired professional snooker player and current commentator. In the 1985 World Snooker Championship final, against defending champion Steve Davis, Taylor lost the first eight frames, but recovered to win 18–17 in a duel on the last black ball. The final's conclusion attracted 18.5 million viewers, setting UK viewership records for any post-midnight broadcast and for any broadcast on BBC Two that still stand.
Taylor had previously been runner-up at the 1979 World Snooker Championship, where he lost the final 16–24 to Terry Griffiths. His highest world ranking came in 1979–1980, when he was second. He won one other ranking title at the 1984 Grand Prix, where he defeated Cliff Thorburn 10–2 in the final, and also won the invitational 1987 Masters, defeating Alex Higgins 9–8 in the final. He made the highest break of his career at the 1987 Carling Challenge, a 141. (Full article...) -
Image 3The 1987 Snooker World Cup was a professional snooker tournament played at the Bournemouth International Centre, England, between 18 and 21 March 1987 for teams of three players. The event was the eighth iteration of the World Cup snooker tournament, first played in 1979 as the World Challenge Cup. A total prize fund of £100,000 was awarded for the event, with the winning team receiving a share of £32,000. The event featured eight participating teams, including two from Ireland, the champions of the previous year's event. Danish brewery company Tuborg were the sponsors for the tournament.
The defending champions, the Ireland "A" side of Dennis Taylor, Alex Higgins and Eugene Hughes met the Canadian team of Cliff Thorburn, Kirk Stevens and Bill Werbeniuk in the final for the second year in a row. The Irish team won the final 9–2 and their third straight championship, having also won the event in 1985 and 1986. (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 5
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...) -
Image 6The 2004 Snooker Grand Prix (known as the 2004 Totesport Grand Prix for sponsorship reasons) was the 2004 edition of the Grand Prix snooker tournament and was held from 2 to 10 October 2004 at the Guild Hall in Preston, England. World number one Ronnie O'Sullivan won the tournament defeating Ian McCulloch by nine frames to five (9–5) in the final. In the semi-finals O'Sullivan defeated Paul Hunter 6–3 and McCulloch beat Michael Judge 6–1. Mark Williams, who won the same event under the name LG Cup the year before, lost in the first round. John Higgins made the highest break with a 147. The 64-man tournament was the first of eight World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA) ranking events in the 2004/2005 snooker season and the next event following last season's World Championship, which was won by O'Sullivan. It preceded the second ranking event of the season, the British Open. (Full article...)
-
Image 7
The 1971 World Snooker Championship was a professional snooker tournament that took place between 28 September and 7 November 1970 in Australia. The tournament was the 1971 edition of the World Snooker Championship, first held in 1927 but was held in 1970. It was the first time the event had been held outside England outside of two challenge matches in 1965, with matches held at various locations in New South Wales and Brisbane. The event featured nine participants, with a round-robin round producing four qualifiers, who then competed in a single-elimination tournament.
Ray Reardon was the defending champion, having defeated John Pulman in the 1970 final, however Reardon lost to John Spencer in the semi-final. Spencer won the event for the second time by defeating Warren Simpson 37–29 in the final held in the Chevron Hotel in Sydney. Eddie Charlton made the highest break of the tournament with a 129 in the final session of his round-robin match against Gary Owen. (Full article...) -
Image 8
James Cahill (born 27 December 1995) is an English former professional snooker player from Blackpool. Cahill first turned professional in 2013, aged 17, after winning the European Under 21 Championships, but returned to amateur status in 2017.
As an amateur, Cahill reached the main stage of the 2019 World Snooker Championship, becoming the first amateur player ever to qualify for the event. At the tournament, he defeated world number one Ronnie O'Sullivan 10–8 in their first round match. O'Sullivan was the second former world number one Cahill had defeated in the 2018–19 snooker season, after his victory over Mark Selby at the 2018 UK Championship. Cahill qualified for a new two-year tour card as the second highest ranked player on the one year list who was not in the top 64 in the world after the 2018–19 season. He rejoined the professional tour in June 2019, only to be relegated again in June 2021, and rejoin June 2022. (Full article...) -
Image 9Clifford Wilson (10 May 1934 – 21 May 1994) was a Welsh professional snooker player who reached the highest ranking of 16, in 1988-89. He was the 1978 World Amateur Champion and won the 1991 World Seniors Championship. He was a successful junior player, known for his fast attacking snooker and potting ability, and won the British Under-19 Championship in 1951 and 1952. In the early 1950s both Wilson and future six-times World Professional Champion Ray Reardon lived in Tredegar, where they played a succession of money matches that attracted large enthusiastic crowds.
A combination of factors, including Reardon leaving Tredegar, led to Wilson virtually giving up the game from 1957 to 1972, but after being asked to take up a vacant place in a works team, he returned to playing and later became the 1978 World Amateur Champion, achieving his victory with an 11–5 win in the final against Joe Johnson. In 1979 Wilson turned professional, aged 45, and, still playing with an attacking style, reached several ranking tournament quarter-finals during his career. At the inaugural World Seniors Championship in 1991 he beat Eddie Charlton 5–4 in the final to take the title. He won the Welsh Amateur Championship in 1956, 1977 and 1979, and was runner-up in the Welsh Professional Championship in 1981 and 1984. He suffered from a number of health conditions, including poor eyesight, during his career, but continued to play professionally until his death in 1994 at the age of 60. (Full article...) -
Image 10George Balabushka (Russian: Григорий Антонович Балабушка Grigoriy Antonovich Balabushka; December 9, 1912 – December 5, 1975) was a Russian-born billiards (pool) cue maker, arguably the most prominent member of that profession, and is sometimes referred to as "the Stradivarius of cuemakers". His full name or last name standing alone is often used to refer to a cue stick made by him. Arriving in the U.S. in 1924, he worked at various carpentry and toy and furniture making jobs. He was an avid pool player and purchased a pool room with a business partner in 1959 and thereafter started making cues as gifts for friends, which quickly blossomed into a business when others wanted to purchase them.
Balabushka turned out approximately 1,200 handcrafted cues during his 16-year cue-making career, spanning from 1959 to his death in 1975. His cues are highly valued collectors items, made more so after being prominently featured in Martin Scorsese's 1986 film The Color of Money. Balabushka cues are generally separated into three distinct classes and time periods related to what blanks Balabushka was using in cue construction: The Titlist blank era (1959–1966), the Burton Spain blank era (1966–1971), and the Gus Szamboti blank era (1971–1975). Original Balabushka cues with verified provenance may realize tens of thousands of dollars at auction. (Full article...)
General images - load new batch
-
Image 1Dutch pool player Niels Feijen at the 2008 European Pool Championship (from Pool (cue sports))
-
Image 2Illustration A: Aerial view of a snooker table with the balls in their starting positions. The cue ball (white) may be placed anywhere in the semicircle (known as the "D") at the start of the game. (from Snooker)
-
Image 3A complete set of snooker balls (from Snooker)
-
Image 6alt=Black snooker ball (from Snooker)
-
Image 7alt=Green snooker ball (from Snooker)
-
Image 8alt=Blue snooker ball (from Snooker)
-
Image 9alt=Red snooker ball (from Snooker)
-
Image 11A player racking the balls (from Pool (cue sports))
-
Image 12alt=Pink snooker ball (from Snooker)
-
Image 13Ronnie O'Sullivan has won the World Championship seven times in the 21st century. (from Snooker)
-
Image 14A set of standard carom billiard balls, comprising a red object ball, one plain white cue ball, and one dotted white cue ball (replaced in modern three-cushion billiards by a yellow ball) for the opponent (from Carom billiards)
-
Image 15Paul Gauguin's 1888 painting Night Café at Arles includes a depiction of French billiards (from Carom billiards)
-
Image 17alt=Brown snooker ball (from Snooker)
-
Image 18alt=Yellow snooker ball (from Snooker)
-
Image 20A pool table diagram (from Pool (cue sports))
-
Image 21A 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)
-
Image 22Balkline table with standard markings (from Carom billiards)
-
Image 23A full-size snooker table set up for the start of a game (from Snooker)
-
Image 25Historic print depicting Michael Phelan's Billiard Saloon located at the corner of 10th Street and Broadway in Manhattan, 1 January 1859 (from Carom billiards)
-
Image 26A sliding scoreboard, some blocks of cue-tip chalk, white chalk-board chalk, and two cue sticks (from Snooker)
-
Image 27The Family Remy by Januarius Zick, c. 1776, featuring billiards among other parlour activities (from Carom billiards)
Major topics
Pool games | ||
---|---|---|
Carom billiards | ||
Snooker | ||
Other games | ||
Resources | ||
Major international tournaments |
| |
Other events | ||
Governing bodies | ||
Categories | ||
Cue sports portal The rules of games in italics are standardized by international sanctioning bodies. |
More topics
Early events | |
---|---|
Match-play | |
Challenges | |
Knock-outs | |
Crucible era | |
Related articles | |
Tournaments | |
---|---|
Related articles | |
Active professional snooker tournaments | |
---|---|
Ranking events | |
Non-ranking events | |
Seniors events |
|
Tours and series | |
Related lists | |
Categories
Associated Wikimedia
The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:
-
Commons
Free media repository -
Wikibooks
Free textbooks and manuals -
Wikidata
Free knowledge base -
Wikinews
Free-content news -
Wikiquote
Collection of quotations -
Wikisource
Free-content library -
Wikiversity
Free learning tools -
Wikivoyage
Free travel guide -
Wiktionary
Dictionary and thesaurus