Snooker is a cue sport played on a rectangular billiards table covered with a green cloth called baize, with six pockets: one at each corner and one in the middle of each long side. First played by British Army officers stationed in India in the second half of the 19th century, the game is played with twenty-two balls, comprising a white cue ball, fifteen red balls and six other balls—a yellow, green, brown, blue, pink and black—collectively called 'the colours'. Using a 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.
Karen Corr is a Northern Irish professional pool and former snooker and English billiards player. She was inducted in the BCA Hall of Fame in 2012.
Pankaj Arjan Advani is an Indian billiards and professional snooker player. He is a 27-time International Billiards and Snooker Federation (IBSF) world champion. He has won 18 billiards world titles, the IBSF World Billiards Championship on 17 occasions and the World Team Billiards Championship once. In snooker, he won the IBSF World Snooker Championship three times, IBSF World six-red championship twice and the IBSF World Team Cup and IBSF World Team Championship one time each. He has the record number of IBSF world championships. He became a snooker professional in 2012/2013.
Efren Manalang Reyes, popularly known by the nicknames "Bata" and "the Magician", is a Filipino professional pool player, who is widely regarded as the greatest pool player of all time, and especially famed for his skill at the challenging one-pocket discipline. In 2003, he was inducted into the Billiard Congress of America's Hall of Fame.
Straight pool, which is also called 14.1 continuous and 14.1 rack, is a cue sport in which two competing players attempt to pocket as many object balls as possible without playing a foul. The game was the primary version of pool played in professional competition until it was superseded by faster-playing games like nine-ball and eight-ball in the 1980s.
Kelly Teresa Fisher is an English professional pool, snooker and English billiards player.
Corey Deuel is an American professional pool player from West Jefferson, Ohio. Nicknamed "Prince of Pool", he won the US Open Nine-ball Championship in 2001, and has won many other major titles. In January 2008, he was ranked the second highest US pool player by the United States Professional Poolplayers Association. He regularly represents the US in the Mosconi Cup. In 2010, he again was selected for the US team in the Mosconi Cup and was responsible for winning 2 of the US team's 8 points in the event. His tournament walk-on music is "Disco Inferno" by the Trammps.
The International Billiards & Snooker Federation (IBSF) is an organisation that governs non-professional snooker and English billiards around the world. As of January 2020, the organisation is headquartered in Doha, Qatar.
Wendy Jans is a Belgian professional snooker and pool player. She has won the IBSF World Snooker Championship for women nine times. She reached her first women's world final at the 2022 World Women's Snooker Championship, but lost 5–6 to Nutcharut Wongharuthai on the final black ball.
Daryl Peach is an English professional pool player, from Lancashire, who resides in Blackpool, England. He won the 2007 WPA World Nine-ball Championship, where he defeated the Philippines' Roberto Gomez 17–15 in the final to become the first British player to win the WPA World Nine-ball Championship.
Robby Foldvari is an Australian player of snooker, English billiards, and pool. He is a multi-year World Billiards Champion, and a national-level champion in both snooker and nine-ball pool (2012), as well as a World Games competitor (2013). Outside of competition, he is a coach and television commentator. Foldvari won the Australian Open 8 Ball Pool Championship (2015), completing the royal flush of national titles in every cuesports discipline. In June 2016 he won the Australian Open 10 ball Pool Championship
Joshua Filler is a German professional pool player from Bönen, Germany. In 2018 Filler defeated Carlo Biado 13–10 to win the 2018 WPA World Nine-ball Championship. In 2017 he was the youngest player to win the China Open, and in 2018 he also won the 10-ball European Pool Championships. Filler became WPA and Euro Tour world number 1 in 2019, and later he reached the final of the 2019 WPA World Ten-ball Championship before losing 10–7 to Ko Ping-chung.
Anna Mazhirina is a Russian born professional pool, snooker and billiards player. She has become a Cyprus resident, and now represents Cyprus in international events.
Amee Kamani is an Indian snooker player. She was runner-up in the 2016 International Billiards and Snooker Federation World Snooker championship, losing 0–5 in the final to the defending champion Wendy Jans. Kamani was the 2018 Asian Billiards Sports Championships Ladies Champion after defeating Siripaporn Nuanthakhamjan 3–0 in the final, and was runner-up at the 2014 Australian Open and the 2019 International Billiards and Snooker Federation Women's six-reds snooker championship.
Anastasia Nechaeva is a Russian amateur snooker and professional pool player. She was runner-up in the 2014 and 2015 IBSF World Snooker Championships.
Mario Morra is a Canadian professional pool player and former professional snooker player. He reached the tournament finals of the 1984 Canadian Professional Championship, the 2008 Canadian Nine-ball championship, and the 2010 Canadian Ten-ball championship.
Daria Sirotina is a Russian amateur snooker and professional pool player. She won the European Ladies Team Championship, partnered with Anastasia Nechaeva, each year from 2012 to 2016. She was runner-up in the women's 2013 IBSF World Six-reds Championship, failing to score in three of the four frames in the final, losing 0–4 to Ng On-yee.
In 2018, championships were held across three continents to determine the best players in major cue sports, including snooker, pool, and English billiards. While these are mostly single player sports, some matches and tournaments are held as either doubles or as team events. The snooker season runs between May and April; the pool and billiards seasons run through the calendar year.
Professional tournaments in table-top cue sports took place in 2020. These events include snooker, pool disciplines and billiards. Whilst these are traditionally singles sports, some matches and tournaments are held as doubles or as teams. The snooker season runs between May and April, whilst the pool and billiards seasons is listed over the calendar year. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the season was disrupted with many events being cancelled or postponed. Cue sports events were played in January and February, before tournaments were discontinued for all disciplines due to the pandemic, returning in June without an audience.
The 2021 U.S. Open Pool Championship was an international nine-ball pool tournament held from 13 to 18 September 2021 in Harrah’s Resort, Atlantic City, New Jersey. It was the 44th entry of the U.S. Open 9-Ball Championships, first held in 1976. Joshua Filler was the defending champion, having won the 2019 U.S. Open Nine-ball Championship. However, Filler lost 4–11 to Aloysius Yapp and 3–11 to Mieszko Fortuński, eliminating him from the tournament. Carlo Biado defeated Yapp 13–8 in the final to become one of the few Filipino players to win the tournament along with Alex Pagulayan in 2005 and Efren Reyes in 1994.
