Portal:Cue sports

The Cue Sports Portal

A player is preparing for a shot in 8-ball

An aluminium billiard rack that is used for 8-ball, 9-ball, and straight pool

Cue sports are a wide variety of games of skill played with a cue stick, 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, a category of stick sports, may collectively be referred to as billiards, though this term has more specific connotations in some English dialects.

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. (Full article...)

Featured articles -

Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.

---

• 

  

  
  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...)
• 
  The 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...)
• 

  

  
  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...)
• 
  The 2019 Champion of Champions (officially the 2019 ManBetX Champion of Champions) was a professional snooker tournament that took place between 4 and 10 November 2019 at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry, England. It was the ninth Champion of Champions event, the first of which was held in 1978. The tournament featured 16 participants who had won events on the World Snooker Tour since the 2018 Champion of Champions, including the winner of the Women's World Championship, competing in the tournament for the first time. As an invitational event, the tournament carried no world ranking points.
  
  Ronnie O'Sullivan was the defending champion, having defeated Kyren Wilson 10–9 in the final of the 2018 event. O'Sullivan lost 5–6 to Neil Robertson in the semi-finals. Robertson defeated reigning world champion Judd Trump 10–9 in the final to win the championship, having required a snooker in the penultimate frame to avoid losing the match. The tournament produced 20 century breaks. The final set a new record for the most centuries in a best-of-19-frames match as Robertson made five centuries and Trump three, for a total of eight. Mark Allen compiled the highest break of the tournament, a 140, in his semi-final loss to Trump. The tournament's total prize fund was £440,000, of which the winner received £150,000. (Full article...)
• 
  The 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...)
• 

  

  
  The 2019 World Snooker Championship (officially the 2019 Betfred World Snooker Championship) was a professional snooker tournament that took place from 20 April to 6 May 2019 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. It was the 43rd consecutive year the World Snooker Championship had been held at the Crucible, and the 20th and final ranking event of the 2018–19 snooker season. Qualifying for the tournament took place from 10 to 17 April 2019 at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield. Sports betting company Betfred sponsored the event.
  
  The winner of the title was Judd Trump, who defeated John Higgins 18–9 in the final to claim his first World Championship. In doing so, Trump became the 11th player to win all three Triple Crown titles at least once. Defending champion Mark Williams lost 9–13 to David Gilbert in the second round of the tournament. For the first time in the history of the World Snooker Championship, an amateur player appeared at the main stage of the event—debutant James Cahill defeated world number one Ronnie O'Sullivan in the first round, before being narrowly defeated by Stephen Maguire in a second round deciding frame. (Full article...)
• 
  
  

  

  Four-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 22 balls, comprising a white cue ball, 15 red balls and six other balls—a yellow, green, brown, blue, pink and black—collectively called 'the colours'. Using a snooker cue, 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 foul committed by the opposing player or team. An individual frame of snooker is won by the player who has scored the most points, and a snooker match ends when a player wins 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...)
• 
  Masako 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...)
• 
  The 2002 World Snooker Championship (also referred to as the 2002 Embassy World Snooker Championship for the purposes of sponsorship) was a professional snooker tournament that took place from 20 April to 6 May 2002 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. It was the final ranking event of the 2001–02 snooker season. This was the 26th consecutive year that the World Snooker Championship had been held at the Crucible, marking the 25th anniversary of the first staging of the event at this venue. The championship was sponsored by cigarette manufacturer Embassy.
  
  Peter Ebdon won his only world title by defeating seven-time winner Stephen Hendry 18–17 in the final. Ebdon defeated Matthew Stevens 17–16 in the semi-finals, and Hendry defeated the defending champion Ronnie O'Sullivan 17–13 to reach the final. This was Hendry's ninth and last appearance in a World Championship final. There were 65 century breaks during the tournament. The highest break of the tournament was by Stevens, who achieved 145 in his quarter-final match. Hendry made 16 centuries during the event, a record for any individual tournament, equalled by Mark Williams in 2022. A total prize fund of £1,615,770 was awarded at the event, the winner receiving £260,000 (Full article...)
• 

  

  
  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...)

Selected articles -

• 
  
  

  

  Immonen at the 2008 Mosconi Cup

  
  Mika Immonen (17 December 1972 – 28 September 2025) was a Finnish professional Hall of Fame pool player, nicknamed "The Iceman." (Full article...)
• 
  
  

  

  Buddy at the 2003 US Open

  
  Cecil P. "Buddy" Hall (May 29, 1945 – May 22, 2025) was an American professional pool player and was considered one of the best nine-ball players of all time. The International Pool Tour heralds Hall as a "living pool legend." He was 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 with creating the "clock system" which is a technique for where to hit the cue-ball, using the face of a clock as a gauge for where to aim.
  
  Hall began playing at 14 years of age in a soda shop in his home town. When local pool rooms would not let him enter because of his age, he obtained a false birth certificate from a local judge which stated he was of legal age. He began his career at Herbie Lynn's pool room, soon dominating the regulars. It was not long before he hit the road to try his hand at a wider playing field. After watching many great players, he first gained prominence after beating some top players after he entered the Johnston City tournament in 1970.

  "I went there to watch all the greats of the day play. Wimpy, Jersey Red, Eddie Taylor, Cornbread Red, Harold Worst, Jimmy Moore, Fats and U.J. were playing one another in both the tournament and in backroom ring games. I entered and was very pleased when I beat Wimpy and Jersey Red and won my entry fee back."

  
  
  In the following years, Johnston City lost out as the hub of top tier tournament play to the Dayton Open Tournament. There, in 1974 organizer Joe Burns instituted a similar all-around tournament to what had been used in the Johnston City. Hall took All-Around first place there in 1974, winning $6,800. He continued to compete in the Dayton Open Tournaments for many years. In 1982 hall won the Caesar's Tahoe Nine-ball Championship by edging out Allen Hopkins in the final with a score of 11–6, winning $35,000 for his efforts; the biggest first prize money in a tournament at the time. Hall’s win was announced on ESPN, which was the first ever mention of a billiard player on that cable television network. "The Rifleman" won a considerable number of 9-Ball tournaments that were held during the 1970s and through to the 2000s. In 1995 'Rags to Rifleman' was published; a biography of his life and career. (Full article...)
• 

  

  A player using a cue stick to push a billiard ball forward to move an object ball

  
  
  A cue stick (simply cue, more specifically billiards cue, pool cue, or snooker cue) is an item of sporting equipment essential to the games of pool, snooker and carom billiards. It is used to strike a ball, usually the cue ball. Cues are tapered sticks, typically about 57–59 inches (about 1.5 m) long and usually between 16 and 21 ounces (450–600 g), with professionals gravitating toward a 19-ounce (540 g) average. Cues for carom tend toward the shorter range, though cue length is primarily a factor of player height and arm length. Most cues are made of wood, but occasionally the wood is covered or bonded with other materials including graphite, carbon fiber or fiberglass. An obsolete term for a cue, used from the 16th to early 19th centuries, is billiard stick. (Full article...)
• 
  The WPA World Nine-ball Championship is an annual professional nine-ball pool tournament contested since 1990. The championship is sanctioned by the World Pool Association (WPA) and principally sponsored and organized by Matchroom Sport, who promote the event as the World Pool Championship. The championship is divided into men's, women's and wheelchair divisions. (Full article...)
• 
  European Pool Championship (also called Dynamic European Championships) is a pool competition organized by the European Pocket Billiard Federation (EPBF). The tournament is held annually since 1980. It should not be confused with the series of smaller events known as the Euro Tour, also run by the EPBF.
  
  Current disciplines include 8-ball, 9-Ball, 10-Ball, Straight pool, and team events), and for different age and ability ranges, with events for men, women, juniors and wheelchair players. (Full article...)
• 
  Sport Lisboa e Benfica (Portuguese pronunciation: [sɨˈpɔɾ liʒˈβoɐ i βɐ̃jˈfikɐ] ^ⓘ), commonly known as Benfica, is a semi-professional billiards team based in Lisbon, Portugal. Founded in 1938, Benfica compete in the Portuguese Billiards League, in carom billiards (three-cushion), pool (eight-ball and nine-ball), and snooker events. The team is almost exclusively composed of Portuguese players. They play at the Estádio da Luz in a 202 square meters room with 4 professional pool tables and a 50 people stand. (Full article...)
• 
  The Women's Professional Billiard Association (WPBA) is a professional women's pool tour based in the United States. It was founded in 1976 as the Women's Professional Billiard Alliance by players Madelyn Whitlow and Palmer Byrd, and by Larry Miller (editor of the National Billiard News). (Full article...)
• 
  
  

  

  Robertson at the 2015 German Masters

  
  Neil Alexander Robertson (born 11 February 1982) is an Australian professional snooker player, who is a former world champion and former world number one. He is the only non-UK born player to have completed snooker's Triple Crown, having won the World Championship in 2010, the Masters in 2012 and 2022, and the UK Championship in 2013, 2015 and 2020. He has claimed 26 career ranking titles and won at least one professional tournament each year between 2006 and 2022.
  
  Robertson first turned professional in the 1998‍–‍99 season but dropped off the tour. He rejoined the tour for the 2003‍–‍04 season where his results improved, later becoming the first Australian to win a ranking event when he won the 2006 Grand Prix. He completed the triple crown in 2013 and was world number one on three separate occasions between 2010 and 2015. Robertson has continued to win tournaments into his forties, with his most recent ranking event victory coming at the 2025 Saudi Arabia Snooker Masters.
  
  Robertson is one of four players to have compiled over 1,000 career century breaks in professional competition, including five maximum breaks. In the 2013–14 season, he became the first player to make 100 centuries in a single season, finishing with a then-record 103 centuries. He was named World Snooker Tour Player of the Year for the 2021‍–‍22 season. Robertson is a member of the World Snooker Tour Hall of Fame and plays left-handed. (Full article...)
• 
  William 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...)
• 
  
  

  

  Massey setting up a trick shot

  
  Michael Massey (born April 9, 1947), professionally known as Mike Massey, is an American professional pool player. From 1989 to 1991 he served as a contributing editor of The Snap Magazine. Massey was born in Loudon, Tennessee, and for several years lived in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he owned a pool hall. He has the nickname of "Tennessee Tarzan", but he now lives in Midway, Utah.
  
  Massey was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Billiard Congress of America on April 7, 2005. For 2007 he was ranked as #8 in Pool & Billiard Magazine's poll of the "Fans' Top 20 Favorite Players". (Full article...)

Did you know (auto-generated) -

• ... that Arthur Conan Doyle defeated Wilfrid Edgecombe at billiards every time he played him at The Harrogate Club?
• ... that Charles C. Peterson played billiards in a plane 4,000 ft (1,200 m) in the air in 1930?
• ... 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 at the 1978 World Snooker Championship, Fred Davis reached the semi-finals at the age of 64?
• ... that Kyren Wilson won the first four frames in all of his snooker matches at the 2023 Tour Championship?
• ... 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 Turkish carom billiards champion Güzin Müjde Karakaşlı grew up playing volleyball for about 12 years?

Related portals and projects

---

  WikiProject Cue sports    WikiProject Sports

Good articles -

These are Good articles, which meet a core set of high editorial standards.

---

• 
  The 2004 European Open was the 2004 edition of the European Open snooker tournament, held from 1 to 6 March 2004, at the Hilton Conference Centre, Portomaso, Malta. It was the final year the event was known as European Open, as the event was renamed to Malta Cup in next year. Stephen Maguire defeated Jimmy White by nine frames to three (9–3) in the final to claim his first ranking-event title, transforming him from "talented underachiever into a world-ranking event winner", according to The Times. In the semi-finals Maguire defeated Stephen Lee and White beat Tony Drago. The tournament was the fifth of eight WPBSA ranking events in the 2003/2004 season, following the Welsh Open and preceding the Irish Masters. (Full article...)
• 
  The 2019 International Championship was a professional snooker tournament that took place from 4 to 11 August 2019 at the Baihu Media Broadcasting Centre in Daqing, China. It was the second ranking event of the 2019/2020 season and the eighth iteration of the International Championship first held in 2012.
  
  Northern Irish cueist Mark Allen was the defending champion, after defeating Australian Neil Robertson in the previous year's final. Allen, however, lost 9–6 to England's Shaun Murphy in the semi-finals. Reigning world champion Judd Trump won the event and his 12th ranking championship with a 10–3 win over Murphy in the final. In winning the event, Trump returned to the world number one position, that he had last held in 2013. (Full article...)
• 
  The 2019 Six-red World Championship (also known as the 2019 SangSom Six-red World Championship for sponsorship reasons) was a six-red snooker invitational tournament held between 2 and 7 September 2019 at the Bangkok Convention Center in Bangkok, Thailand. The event was the 2019 edition of the Six-red World Championship, first held in 2008. The event's final was contested by Scots Stephen Maguire and John Higgins who had won the 2019 World Cup doubles competition as a pair earlier in the season. Maguire won the event, defeating Higgins 8–6. The win was Maguire's first singles tournament victory since 2014.
  
  Kyren Wilson won the previous year's event, but lost in the first knockout round to David Gilbert 4–6. The event saw a prize fund of 10,500,000 baht, with 4,000,000 baht awarded to the winner. Only one maximum break of 75 was made during the event, by Thepchaiya Un-Nooh. The event was sponsored by Thai rum producers SangSom. (Full article...)
• 
  The Billiards and Snooker Control Council (B&SCC) (formerly called the Billiards Association and Control Council (BA&CC)) was the governing body of the games of English billiards and snooker and organised professional and amateur championships in both sports. It was formed in 1919 by the union of the Billiards Association (founded in 1885) and the Billiards Control Club (founded in 1908).
  
  The B&SCC lost control of both the amateur and professional games in the early 1970s, following a dispute with professional players over challenge matches for the World Billiards Championship, and dissatisfaction from snooker associations outside the UK about the balance of voting power in the organisation, with a large proportion of votes being held in a small number of English areas. Following the loss of its government funding, the B&SCC went into voluntary liquidation in 1992 and its assets were later acquired by the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association. (Full article...)
• 
  The 2004 British Open was the 2004 edition of the British Open snooker tournament, held from 8 to 14 November 2004 at Brighton Centre, Brighton, England. John Higgins won the tournament, defeating Stephen Maguire nine frames to six in the all-Scottish final to lift his first ranking-event title since the 2001 edition of this event. In the semi-finals, Higgins defeated Shaun Murphy 6–0 and Maguire defeated Ronnie O'Sullivan 6–1. The defending champion Stephen Hendry lost in the quarter-finals. Higgins made the highest tournament break with his two breaks of 144. The tournament was the second of eight WPBSA ranking events in the 2004/2005 snooker season, following the Grand Prix in October, which was won by O'Sullivan. It preceded the third ranking event of the season, the UK Championship. (Full article...)
• 
  The 2022 Masters (officially the 2022 Cazoo Masters) was a professional non-ranking snooker tournament that took place from 9 to 16 January 2022 at Alexandra Palace in London, England. It was the 48th staging of the Masters tournament, which was first held in 1975, and the second of three Triple Crown events in the 2021–22 snooker season, following the 2021 UK Championship and preceding the 2022 World Snooker Championship. Broadcast by the BBC and Eurosport in Europe, it was sponsored for the first time by car retailer Cazoo.
  
  The participants were invited to the tournament based on the world rankings as they stood after the UK Championship. Some players took issue with the cut-off date, noting that the in-form Luca Brecel, who had entered the top 16 by winning the 2021 Scottish Open in December, did not qualify as the event took place after the UK Championship. Ding Junhui, who had made 15 consecutive Masters appearances between 2007 and 2021, fell out of the top 16 after the UK Championship and failed to qualify. Zhao Xintong, who entered the top 16 for the first time by winning the UK Championship, was the only Masters debutant. John Higgins set a new record of 28 Masters appearances, surpassing Jimmy White and Steve Davis, both of whom had competed 27 times. (Full article...)
• 

  

  
  Kristina Olegovna Tkach (Russian: Кристина Олеговна Ткач, romanized: Kristina Tkach; born 19 January 1999) is a Russian professional pool player. She became the 2017 WPA World Nine-ball Junior Championship winner, defeating Lee Woo-jin in the final 9–6. Tkach is a four time European champion having won the eight-ball event in 2016 and 2019, as well as Straight pool in 2017 and 2019. In addition, she is a nine-time Junior European Champion.
  
  Tkach is a regular player on the Euro Tour events, reaching the Tour number one in 2016. She is the second most successful player of all time on the tour behind Jasmin Ouschan, having won seven events beginning with the 2016 North Cyprus Open. (Full article...)
• 
  
  

  

  Nations that hosted an event in the snooker calendar during the 2019–20 season

  
  The 2019–20 snooker season was a series of professional snooker tournaments played between 9 May 2019 and 22 August 2020. In total, 47 events were held during the season: however, the ending of the season was highly disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. 18 world ranking tournaments were planned to take place, but only 17 were played. An event was held in Austria, the first time in any snooker season, while the 2020 China Open was cancelled. The Tour Championship and the World Snooker Championship were postponed, and the Gibraltar Open played with no audience. The season contained 128 professional tour players, 35 of which had been given new two-year places on the tour from a combination of invitations and qualifying events.
  
  Judd Trump, the reigning world champion, won a record six ranking titles for a season. Trump also became the second player ever to compile over 100 century breaks in a season. Ronnie O'Sullivan won the 2020 World Snooker Championship, defeating Kyren Wilson with a score of 18–8. By doing so O'Sullivan also won his 37th ranking title, the most of any player. The other Triple Crown championships were the 2019 UK Championship, won by Ding Junhui, and the 2020 Masters, won by Stuart Bingham. (Full article...)
• 
  The 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...)
• 
  Herbert 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...)

General images -

The following are images from various cue sports-related articles on Wikipedia.

• 
  alt=Red snooker ball (from Snooker)
• 
  Cigarette card, c. 1911, showing George Sutton playing balkline (from Carom billiards)
• 
  A shot using a rest, allowing the player to reach farther down the table (from Snooker)
• 
  alt=Brown snooker ball (from Snooker)
• 
  A full-size snooker table set up for a game (from Snooker)
• 
  The World Snooker Championship trophy (from Snooker)
• 
  A sliding scoreboard, some blocks of cue-tip chalk, white chalk-board chalk and two cues (from Snooker)
• 
  alt=Blue snooker ball (from Snooker)
• 
  A player racking the balls (from Pool (cue sports))
• 
  Dutch pool player Niels Feijen at the 2008 European Pool Championship (from Pool (cue sports))
• 
  Louis XIV playing billiards (1694) (from Carom billiards)
• 
  alt=Pink snooker ball (from Snooker)
• 
  A pool table diagram (from Pool (cue sports))
• 
  A Game of Billiards by Louis-Léopold Boilly, 1807 (from Carom billiards)
• 
  alt=Green snooker ball (from Snooker)
• 
  A massé shot around a pin (from Carom billiards)
• 
  alt=Yellow snooker ball (from Snooker)
• 
  Historic print depicting Michael Phelan's Billiard Saloon located at the corner of 10th Street and Broadway in Manhattan, 1 January 1859 (from Carom billiards)
• 
  Illustration A: Aerial view of a snooker table with the 22 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)
• 
  Joe Davis, founder of the World Snooker Championship, won 15 consecutive world titles from 1927 to 1946. (from Snooker)
• 
  A 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)
• 
  Balkline table with standard markings (from Carom billiards)
• 
  Jerome Keogh invented the game in 1910. (from Straight pool)
• 
  A 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)
• 
  The Family Remy by Januarius Zick, c. 1776, featuring billiards among other parlour activities (from Carom billiards)
• 
  alt=Black snooker ball (from Snooker)
• 
  A complete set of snooker balls (from Snooker)
• 
  Paul Gauguin's 1888 painting Night Café at Arles includes a depiction of French billiards (from Carom billiards)

Major topics

More topics

Categories

Category puzzle

Select [►] to view subcategories

Cue sports

Cue sports by continent

Cue sports by country

Cue sports related lists

Cue sports by decade

Cue sports by year

Cue sports disciplines

Cue sports people

Cue sports business

Cue sports competitions

Cue sports equipment

Cue sports mass media

Cue sports organizations

Tabletop cue games

Cue sports teams

Cue sports toys and games

Trick shots

Cue sports venues

Women in cue sports

Non-free cue sports files

Cue sports stubs

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

Discover Wikipedia using portals

• 

  List of all portals
• 
  The arts portal
• 
  Biography portal
• 
  Current events portal
• 
  Geography portal
• 
  History portal
• 
  Mathematics portal
• 
  Science portal
• 
  Society portal
• 
  Technology portal

• 

  Random portal

• 

  WikiProject Portals