Portal:Cue sports
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Wikipedia portal for content related to cue sports
The Cue Sports Portal


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...)
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Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.
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Image 1

The 2020 World Snooker Championship (officially the 2020 Betfred World Snooker Championship) was a professional snooker tournament that took place from 31 July to 16 August 2020 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. It was the 44th consecutive year that the World Snooker Championship was held at the Crucible. The final ranking event of the 2019–20 snooker season, the tournament was originally scheduled to take place from 18 April to 4 May 2020, but both the qualifying stage and the main rounds were postponed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The event was one of the first to allow live audiences since the onset of the pandemic, but on the first day, it was announced that the event would be played behind closed doors for subsequent days. A limited number of spectators were allowed in for the final two days of the championship.
The tournament was organised by the World Snooker Tour, a subsidiary of the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association, and was broadcast by the BBC, Eurosport and Matchroom Sport. The event had a total prize fund of £2,395,000, with the winner receiving £500,000. Qualifying for the tournament was due to be held between 8 and 15 April 2020, but instead took place from 21 to 28 July at the English Institute of Sport, Sheffield. There were 128 participants in the qualifying rounds, with a mix of professional and invited amateur players, 16 of whom reached the main stage of the tournament, where they played the top 16 players in the snooker world rankings. The event was sponsored by sports betting company Betfred. (Full article...) -
Image 2The 2021 World Snooker Championship (officially the 2021 Betfred World Snooker Championship) was a professional snooker tournament that took place from 17 April to 3 May 2021 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. It was the 45th consecutive year the World Snooker Championship was held at the Crucible Theatre and the 15th and final ranking event of the 2020–21 snooker season. It was organised by the World Snooker Tour. The event was sponsored by sports betting company Betfred and broadcast by the BBC, Eurosport and Matchroom Sport. It featured a total prize fund of £2,395,000 of which the winner received £500,000.
Qualifying for the tournament took place between 5 and 14 April 2021 at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield. There were 128 participants in the qualifying rounds, consisting of a mix of professional and invited amateur players. The main stage of the tournament featured 32 players: the top 16 players from the snooker world rankings and an additional 16 players from the qualifying rounds. Ronnie O'Sullivan was the defending champion, having won his sixth world title at the previous year's event, where he defeated Kyren Wilson 18–8 in the final. O'Sullivan lost in the second round to Anthony McGill 12–13. Mark Selby defeated Shaun Murphy 18–15 in the final to win his fourth world title and the 20th ranking title of his career. There were a record 108 century breaks made at the Crucible, with an additional 106 made in qualifying rounds. The tournament's highest break was 144 by Murphy in the second round. (Full article...) -
Image 3Masako 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 4The 1986 World Snooker Championship (also referred to as the 1986 Embassy World Snooker Championship for the purposes of sponsorship) was a professional snooker tournament that took place between 19 April and 5 May 1986 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. It was the sixth and final ranking event of the 1985–86 snooker season and the 1986 edition of the World Snooker Championship, first held in 1927. The total prize fund was £350,000 with £70,000 awarded to the winner and was sponsored by cigarette manufacturer Embassy.
The defending champion was Dennis Taylor, who had defeated Steve Davis 18–17 in the 1985 World Snooker Championship final to win his first world title. In defence of his title, Taylor lost in the first round of the event 6–10 to Mike Hallett. Joe Johnson the world number 16 defeated Davis 18–12 in the final to win his sole ranking event. Prior to the competition, the bookmakers' odds for a Johnson victory were 150/1. There were 20 century breaks compiled in total during the tournament, the highest of which was a 134 made by Davis in the opening frame of his quarter-final win. (Full article...) -
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The 2015 World Snooker Championship (officially the 2015 Betfred World Snooker Championship) was a professional snooker tournament which took place from 19 April to 5 May 2015 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. It was the 39th consecutive year that the World Snooker Championship had been held at the Crucible, and was the final ranking event of the 2014–15 snooker season. Sports betting company Betfred sponsored the event for the first time in three years, having previously done so from 2009 to 2012. The top sixteen players in the snooker world rankings were placed into the draw, and another sixteen players qualified for the event at a tournament taking place from 8 to 15 April 2015 at the Ponds Forge International Sports Centre, Sheffield.
Mark Selby was the defending champion, having defeated the defending champion Ronnie O'Sullivan in the 2014 final. Selby lost 11–13 in the second round to event debutant Anthony McGill, and became the 16th first-time champion unable to defend his title at the venue. Shaun Murphy, the 2005 winner, met Stuart Bingham in the final. Bingham, who was given odds of 50–1 to win the tournament by bookmakers before the start of the tournament, defeated Murphy 18–15 in the final to win the first world title of his 20-year professional career. Aged 38, Bingham became the oldest player to win the title since Ray Reardon in 1978. (Full article...) -
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Judd Trump is the current world number one.
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 conclusion of a season. Since 2010, however, the rankings were changed so that they would 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 7The 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...) -
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The 2019 Tour Championship (officially the 2019 Coral Tour Championship) was a professional snooker ranking tournament that took place from 19 to 24 March 2019 at Venue Cymru in Llandudno, Wales. Organised by World Snooker, it was the first edition of the Tour Championship and the third and final event of the inaugural Coral Cup. It was the eighteenth ranking event of the 2018–19 snooker season.
The draw for the Tour Championship comprised the top eight players based on the single year ranking list, taking part in a single elimination tournament. Each match was played over a minimum of two sessions, the final as best-of-25-frames over two days. The winner of the tournament won £150,000 out of a total prize fund of £375,000. The event was sponsored by betting company Coral. (Full article...) -
Image 9The 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 10The 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...)
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Image 1Yan at the 2022 European Masters
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 2LoreeJon Ogonowski-Brown (formerly LoreeJon Jones, LoreeJon Hasson, sometimes known mononymically as LoreeJon; born November 6, 1965) is a professional pool player.
A child prodigy who began playing at the age of 4 at her home in Garwood, New Jersey, she picked up the game from her father, John Ogonowski.
Recognizing her talent, her father built wooden boxes around the table so she would be the correct height for him to teach her the sport. Her father was her instructor, and her mother became her daily practice partner. She ran her first rack of balls at age 5. She performed her first three trick shots at age 6 in Chicago at a men's World Straight Pool tournament. At age 11, she became a pro player with the Women's Professional Billiard Association (WPBA) and came to be known as "Queen of the Hill". (Full article...) -
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Ruth McGinnis (1910 – May 16, 1974) was an American straight pool player, who is considered one of the greatest female pool players of all time. (Full article...) -
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Francisco Bustamante (born December 29, 1963) is a Filipino professional pool player from Tarlac, Central Luzon and the 2010 World Nine-ball Champion, nicknamed "Django", after the lead character of the 1966 film of the same name, and sometimes also called "Bustie", especially in the United States. Bustamante has won over 100 international titles and is considered one of the greatest pool players of all time. (Full article...) -
Image 5The Euro Tour is a series of professional pool events set around Europe, founded in 1992, and created by the European Pocket Billiard Federation. The Tour's first event was the Belgium Open, held on 29–31 May 1992. The event was won by Mika Immonen.
As of 2025, the Euro Tour has hosted 192 tournaments, currently in the discipline of 10-Ball, hosting between 1 and 6 events per year, since 2010. (Full article...) -
Image 6Wakelin at the 2016 Paul Hunter Classic
Chris Wakelin (born 16 March 1992) is an English professional snooker player from Rugby, Warwickshire. He turned professional in 2013 and won his first ranking title at the 2023 Snooker Shoot Out. (Full article...) -
Image 7McGill at the 2016 Paul Hunter Classic
Anthony McGill (born 5 February 1991) is a Scottish professional snooker player. He is a practice partner of retired snooker player Alan McManus.
McGill turned professional in 2010, after finishing fourth in the 2009/2010 PIOS rankings. He won the 2016 Indian Open, after having previously never been beyond the quarter-final stage of a ranking event. (Full article...) -
Image 8Maximilian Lechner (born 27 May 1990) is an Austrian professional pool player.
Lechner has been successful on the Euro Tour, where he has reached the last 16 at the 2017 Dutch Open, 2017 Treviso Open, 2018 Leende Open, 2018 Sankt Johann im Pongau Open, as well as reaching the quarter-finals of the 2017 Klagenfurt Open before reaching semifinals at both and 2018 Treviso Open and 2019 Leende Open. (Full article...) -
Image 9Cutthroat or cut-throat, also sometimes referred to as three-man-screw, is a typically three-player or team pocket billiards game, played on a pool table, with a full standard set of pool balls (15 numbered object balls and a cue ball); the game cannot be played with three or more players with an unnumbered reds-and-yellows ball set, as used in blackball. Each player is commonly assigned a set of five consecutively numbered object balls, though the number of balls will vary by number of players. The object of the game is to be the last player with at least one ball of their group remaining on the table.
The name "cutthroat" is not unique to pool, but is used to refer to other games played with three or more players in which all players must fend for themselves, e.g. cutthroat bridge and cutthroat American handball. (Full article...) -
Image 10Morton Goldberg (December 17, 1916 – February 22, 1996), also known as Larry Johnson was an American professional pool player. Born in Rochester, New York, Goldberg beat such famous pool players as Minnesota Fats, Irving Crane, and Willie Munson (Full article...)
Did you know (auto-generated) - load new batch

- ... that at the 1978 World Snooker Championship, Fred Davis reached the semi-finals at the age of 64?
- ... that Charles C. Peterson played billiards in a plane 4,000 ft (1,200 m) in the air in 1930?
- ... that Arthur Conan Doyle defeated Wilfrid Edgecombe at billiards every time he played him at The Harrogate Club?
- ... 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 Kyren Wilson won the first four frames in all of his snooker matches at the 2023 Tour Championship?
- ... that after winning the 2024 Masters, snooker player Ronnie O'Sullivan is both the youngest and oldest winner of the tournament?
- ... that Turkish carom billiards champion Güzin Müjde Karakaşlı grew up playing volleyball for about 12 years?
Related portals and projects
Good articles - load new batch
These are Good articles, which meet a core set of high editorial standards.
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Image 1Danganronpa: Unlimited Battle is a 2015 action video game developed and published by Spike Chunsoft. A part of the Danganronpa series, it was released in Japan for Android and iOS before ceasing operations later in 2015. The gameplay involved using the touchscreen to shoot the characters from the player's team, as with billiards, towards enemies in a confined arena-like area. The game was free to play and was supported by microtransactions.
Video game journalists questioned the choice to use the Danganronpa series to create a touchscreen-based action game, but still felt that it should be given a chance; one noted however that the game retained the style of the previous games in the series, and one called it unusually good for its genre. Over 700,000 players had registered for the game. (Full article...) -
Image 2George Balabushka (Russian: Григорий Антонович Балабушка Grigoriy Antonovich Balabushka; December 9, 1912 – December 5, 1975) was a Russian-born billiards cue maker, arguably one of the most prominent member of that profession. 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 collector's 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...) -
Image 3Wii Play is a 2006 party video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Wii. It was released as a launch game for the console in Japan, Europe, and Australia in December 2006, and was released in North America in February 2007. The game features nine minigames, including a Duck Hunt-esque shooting range, a fishing game, and a billiards game, each of which are designed to showcase the features of the Wii Remote controller.
Developed as a compilation of prototype games originally shown off at the E3 expo in 2006, Wii Play was developed by Nintendo EAD simultaneously with Wii Sports, which also contained tech demos from E3. The featured games make use of several aspects of the Wii Remote, such as its detection of rotation and depth movement through motion sensing and its infrared pointer. (Full article...) -
Image 4Efren Reyes at the 2012 WPA World Nine-ball Championship
Efren Manalang Reyes OLD PLH (born August 26, 1954) is a Filipino professional pool player. A winner of over 100 international titles, Reyes was the first player to win world championships in two different pool disciplines. Among his numerous titles, Reyes is a four-time World Eight-ball champion, the 1999 WPA World Nine-ball Championship winner, a three-time U.S. Open winner, a two-time World Pool League champion, a four-time All Japan Championship winner, a seven-time Asian Nine-ball Tour champion, and a thirteen-time Derby City Classic winner. Reyes also represented the Philippines at the World Cup of Pool, winning the event with partner Francisco Bustamante in 2006 and 2009. By defeating American player Earl Strickland in the inaugural The Color of Money event in 1997, Reyes took home the largest single match purse in pool history of $100,000. Many analysts, fans and players consider Reyes to be the greatest pool player of all time.
Reyes is nicknamed "The Magician"—for his ability on the pool table—and "Bata" (Filipino for "kid or child"), to distinguish him from an elder pool player by the same name. In addition to pool, Reyes has played international billiards, specifically one-cushion and three-cushion. (Full article...) -
Image 5The 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. It was the 14th edition of the Championship League. The event featured 64 players from the World Snooker Tour competing in three rounds of round-robin groups of four players. The initial group stage matches were played between 1 and 8 June, the group winners' stage on 9 and 10 June, and the finals stage on 11 June. It was one of the first live sporting events to be held in the United Kingdom since the start of the coronavirus lockdown in March 2020.
Luca Brecel won the tournament, 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...) -
Image 6The 2017 Masters (officially the 2017 Dafabet Masters) was a professional non-ranking snooker tournament that took place from 15 to 22 January 2017 at Alexandra Palace in London, England. It was the 43rd staging of the Masters and the second Triple Crown event of the 2016/17 snooker season, following the 2016 UK Championship and preceding the 2017 World Snooker Championship.
Ronnie O'Sullivan was the defending champion, having defeated Barry Hawkins 10–1 in the final of the 2016 event. O'Sullivan reached a record-extending 12th Masters final and successfully defended his title, defeating Joe Perry 10–7 to win the tournament for a record seventh time, surpassing the six titles won by Stephen Hendry. This was the first successful title defence at the Masters since Paul Hunter in 2002. Marco Fu compiled the highest break of the tournament, scoring a 141 in his semi-final match against O'Sullivan. (Full article...) -
Image 7The 2001 Irish Masters (officially the 2001 Citywest Irish Masters) was a professional invitational snooker tournament which was held at the Citywest Hotel in Saggart, Dublin, from 27 March to 1 April. It was the 24th Irish Masters and the fifth and final World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association invitational event in the 2000–01 snooker season. The tournament was co-sponsored by the Health Promotion Unit and the Office of Tobacco Control of the Department of Health and Children and hotel group Citywest.
John Higgins was the defending champion of the tournament but was eliminated in the quarter-finals following a defeat by Peter Ebdon. Ronnie O'Sullivan, three-time tournament winner over the course of the season, won the competition, beating three-time Irish Masters winner Stephen Hendry nine frames to eight (9–8) in the final. In the semi-finals, O'Sullivan defeated Ebdon and Hendry beat defending world champion Mark Williams. O'Sullivan made a century break of 137 in the second frame of his quarter-final match with six-time world champion Steve Davis, the highest of the tournament. (Full article...) -
Image 8Clive Harold Everton (7 September 1937 – 27 September 2024) was an English sports commentator, journalist, author and professional billiards and snooker player. He founded Snooker Scene magazine, which was first published (as World Snooker) in 1971, and continued as editor until September 2022. He authored over twenty books about cue sports from 1972 onwards.
Everton began commentating on snooker for BBC radio in 1972 and for BBC Television from 1978 until 2010. In the snooker boom years of the 1980s, he commentated alongside Ted Lowe and Jack Karnehm, and became the leading commentator in the 1990s. As an amateur player, he won junior titles in English billiards and the Welsh billiards title several times. He was five-times runner up in the English amateur billiards championship and twice a semi-finalist at the world amateur championship. In snooker, he partnered Roger Bales as they won the United Kingdom National Pairs Championship. Everton turned professional in 1981, achieving a highest ranking of 47th in the world in ten years as a snooker professional. He reached a peak of ninth place in the professional billiards rankings and remained in the top 20 ranked players even into his sixties. (Full article...) -
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Nick van den Berg (born 24 May 1980) is a Dutch professional pool player. He was the runner up at the 2005 WPA World Eight-ball Championship, where he lost to Wu Chia-ching 11–5 in the final. He is a multiple time winner of events on the Euro Tour, winning 10 tournaments between 2002 and 2017, the fourth highest in the history of the tour. A six-time winner of the European Pool Championships, Van den Berg has represented Europe at the Mosconi Cup on eight occasions, winning the event on six occasions as well as tying the event in 2006. (Full article...) -
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The 2020 Shoot Out (officially the 2020 BetVictor Snooker Shoot Out) was a professional ranking snooker tournament held from 20 to 23 February 2020 at the Watford Colosseum in Watford, England. It was the 13th ranking event of the 2019–20 snooker season. It was played under a variation of the standard rules of snooker. The event was the third of four events sponsored by BetVictor, making up the 2020 European Series.
The defending champion was Thailand's Thepchaiya Un-Nooh, who defeated England's Michael Holt 74–0 in the 2019 final. In 2020, Un-Nooh was beaten by Peter Lines in the second round. For the second consecutive year, Holt reached the final, where he defeated Zhou Yuelong 64–1. There were four century breaks during the event, the highest being a 133 by Thor Chuan Leong. There was a prize fund of £171,000, £50,000 of which was awarded to the winner. (Full article...)
General images - load new batch
The following are images from various cue sports-related articles on Wikipedia.
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Image 1A complete set of snooker balls (from Snooker)
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Image 2A 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 3Joe Davis, founder of the World Snooker Championship, won 15 consecutive world titles from 1927 to 1946. (from Snooker)
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Image 4alt=Pink snooker ball (from Snooker)
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Image 5A sliding scoreboard, some blocks of cue-tip chalk, white chalk-board chalk and two cues (from Snooker)
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Image 6Paul Gauguin's 1888 painting Night Café at Arles includes a depiction of French billiards (from Carom billiards)
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Image 7The Family Remy by Januarius Zick, c. 1776, featuring billiards among other parlour activities (from Carom billiards)
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Image 9Balkline table with standard markings (from Carom billiards)
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Image 10A full-size snooker table set up for a game (from Snooker)
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Image 12A 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 13alt=Yellow snooker ball (from Snooker)
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Image 14A player racking the balls (from Pool (cue sports))
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Image 15alt=Red snooker ball (from Snooker)
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Image 16Dutch pool player Niels Feijen at the 2008 European Pool Championship (from Pool (cue sports))
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Image 17Illustration 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)
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Image 18alt=Black snooker ball (from Snooker)
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Image 19The World Snooker Championship trophy (from Snooker)
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Image 21alt=Brown snooker ball (from Snooker)
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Image 23alt=Green snooker ball (from Snooker)
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Image 24alt=Blue snooker ball (from Snooker)
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Image 26A pool table diagram (from Pool (cue sports))
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Image 28Historic 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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