Snooker is a cue sport played on a rectangular 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 cue ball, fifteen red balls, and six other balls—a yellow, green, brown, blue, pink, and black—collectively called the colours. Using a cue stick, the individual players or teams take turns to strike the white cue ball to pot other balls in a predefined sequence, accumulating points for each successful pot and for each time the opposing player or team commits a foul. An individual frame of snooker is won by the player who has scored the most points. A snooker match ends when a player reaches a predetermined number of frames.
Straight pool, which is also called 14.1 continuous and 14.1 rack, is a cue sport in which two competing players attempt to pot as many billiard 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 The game was the primary version of pool played in professional competition until it was superseded by faster-playing games like nine-ball and eight-ball in the 1980s.
A maximum break is the highest possible break in a single frame of snooker. A player compiles a maximum break by potting all 15 reds with 15 blacks for 120 points, followed by all six colours for a further 27 points. Compiling a maximum break is regarded as a particularly significant achievement in the game of snooker, and may be compared to a nine-dart finish in darts or a 300 game in ten-pin bowling.
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.
Niels Feijen is a Dutch professional pool player, from the Hague. His nickname is "the Terminator". In 2014 he won the WPA World 9-ball championship.
Matchroom Sport is a sporting event promotions company founded by English entrepreneur Barry Hearn and run by Hearn and his son Eddie Hearn. It first came to attention in the sports of snooker and boxing and is also involved in pool, bowling, golf, fishing, darts, table tennis, poker and gymnastics. The company is based in Brentwood, Essex. Matchroom has broadcasting agreements in the United Kingdom with Sky Sports, the BBC and ITV.
In snooker, a century break is a break of 100 points or more, compiled in one visit to the table. A century break requires potting at least 25 consecutive balls, and the ability to score centuries is regarded as a mark of the highest skill in snooker. Ronnie O'Sullivan has described a player's first century break as the "ultimate milestone for any snooker player".
Rodney Morris is a professional pool player of Chamorro - Hawaiian descent. He currently resides in Acworth, Georgia. Rodney married his wife Rheyannon in July 2020.
Darren Appleton is an English pool player, best known for playing Eight-ball, Nine-ball and Ten-ball pool.
The World Snooker Tour (WST) is the main professional snooker tour, consisting of approximately 128 players competing on a circuit of up to 28 tournaments each season. The World Snooker Tour is administered by World Snooker Ltd, the commercial arm of professional snooker, which introduced the World Snooker Tour name, logo, and revised website as part of a 2020 rebranding. The principal stakeholder in World Snooker Ltd is Matchroom Sport, which owns 51 percent of the company; the sport's governing body, the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA), owns 26 percent. To compete on the World Snooker Tour, players must be WPBSA members.
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 declaration of 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.
The sport of professional snooker has had a world ranking system in place since 1976. Certain tournaments were given "ranking" status, with the results at those events contributing to a player's world ranking. The events that made up the 1976–77 snooker season were the first to award players with ranking points. Originally, the world rankings were decided based only on results in the World Snooker Championship, but other events were later added. The system used for the 2019–20 snooker season was first used in the 2010–11 season, where players won ranking points based entirely on prize money won from these events. The rankings are based on the prior two seasons, with ten revisions after specific tournaments throughout the season. These revisions are used as official rankings, with points awarded in the current season overwriting those from two years prior.
The year of 2019 included professional tournaments surrounding table-top cue sports. These events include snooker, pool disciplines and billiards. Whilst these are traditionally singles sports, some matches and tournaments are held as doubles, or team events. The snooker season runs between May and April, whilst the pool and billiards seasons run in the calendar year.
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.
The sport of professional snooker has had a world ranking system in place since 1976. Certain tournaments were given ranking status, with the results at those events contributing to a player's world ranking. The events that made up the 1976–77 snooker season were the first to use ranking points, awarding points from earlier seasons. Originally, the world rankings were decided based only on results in the World Snooker Championship, but other events were later added. The system used for the 2020–21 snooker season was first used in the 2010–11 season, where players were awarded ranking points based entirely on prize money won from these events. The rankings are based on the prior two seasons, with ten revisions after specific tournaments throughout the season. These revisions are used as official rankings, with points awarded in the current season overwriting those from two years prior.
Judd Trump has made eight maximum breaks and more than 850 century breaks in the professional sport of snooker.
The 2021–22 snooker season was a series of snooker tournaments played from July 2021 to May 2022, including the professional World Snooker Tour but also featuring events for female, senior, and Q School players. The season saw a record five players claim their first professional ranking titles: David Gilbert, Zhao Xintong, Hossein Vafaei, Fan Zhengyi, and Robert Milkins. Nutcharut Wongharuthai won her first World Women's Snooker Championship, becoming the only player besides Reanne Evans and Ng On-yee to win the women's world title in 19 years. Ronnie O'Sullivan won the World Snooker Championship, equalling Stephen Hendry's modern era record of seven world titles and becoming the oldest world champion in snooker history at the age of 46 years and 148 days. Lee Walker won his first World Seniors Championship.
The official 2021/2022 snooker world ranking points for the professional snooker players on the World Snooker Main Tour in the 2021–22 season are based on performances in ranking tournaments over a two-year rolling period. The rankings at the start of 2021/2022 season are determined by prize money earned in the 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 seasons and are updated after every tournament carrying ranking status; the players are re-ranked at the beginning of the current season after removing players relegated at the end of the previous season from the ranking list. As points are accrued from tournaments throughout the current season, the points from the corresponding tournaments from two seasons earlier are dropped. The rankings are used to set the official tournament seedings at various points throughout the season; even though the rankings are officially updated after every tournament carrying ranking status not all the rankings are used as seedings, and only the rankings officially used as seedings are documented below. The total points accumulated by the cut-off dates for the revised seedings are based on all the points up to that date in the 2021/2022 season, all of the points from the 2020/2021 season, and the points from the 2019/2020 season that have not yet been dropped.
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 of the few Filipino players to win the tournament along with Alex Pagulayan in 2005 and Efren Reyes in 1994.
