Nine-ball is a discipline of the cue sport pool. The game's origins are traceable to the 1920s in the United States. It is played on a rectangular billiard table with pockets at each of the four corners and in the middle of each long side. Using a cue stick, players must strike the white cue ball to pocket nine colored billiard balls, hitting them in ascending numerical order. An individual game is won by the player pocketing the 9-ball. Matches are usually played as a race to a set number of racks, with the player who reaches the set number winning the match.
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.
Efren Manalang Reyes, popularly known by the nicknames "Bata" and "The Magician", is a Filipino professional pool player. Reyes is widely considered one of the greatest pool players of all time. A winner of over 100 international titles, Reyes was the first player to win the WPA World Championships in two different pool disciplines. Among his numerous titles, Reyes is a WPA World Nine-ball Champion and WPA World Eight-ball Champion, a U.S. Open 9-Ball Championship winner, a four-time Sands Regency 9-Ball Open winner, and a thirteen-time Derby City Classic winner. Reyes also represented the Philippines at the World Cup of Pool, winning the event with his partner Francisco Bustamante in 2006 and 2009. Reyes defeated American legend Earl Strickland in The Color of Money challenge match in 1996, in a winner-take-all prize of $100,000.
William Joseph Mosconi 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.
Pool is a classification of cue sports played on a table with six pockets along the rails, into which balls are shot. Each specific pool game has its own name; some of the better-known include eight-ball, blackball, nine-ball, ten-ball, seven-ball, straight pool, one-pocket, and bank pool. Eight-ball is the most frequently played discipline of pool, and is often thought of as synonymous with "pool".
Gerda Hofstätter Gergerson, nicknamed "G-Force", is an Austrian professional pool player. Hofstätter won the WPA World Nine-ball Championship in 1995. She is a winner at the European Pool Championship on nine occasions, and won the Austrian national Championship seventeen times. Hofstätter is a two-time Hall of Fame inductee being voted into both the Women's Professional Billiard Association and Billiard Congress of America Hall of Fames in the Greatest Players Category. Hofstätter was the Austrian Sportswoman of the Year for Carinthia in 1993. Hofstätter played on the WPBA Tour until her retirement, doing so from 1993 onward.
Jeanette Lee is a Korean-American professional pool player. She was nicknamed the Black Widow by her friends because, in spite of her sweet demeanor, she would "eat people alive" when she got to a pool table and always wear black when playing pool.
Kelly Fisher is an English professional pool, snooker and English billiards player.
Earl Strickland is an American professional pool player who is considered one of the best nine-ball players of all time. He has won over 100 championship titles and three world titles. In 2006 he was inducted into the Billiard Congress of America's Hall of Fame. In 1996, Strickland won the largest cash prize to date winning the PCA $1,000,000 Challenge by being the first player to run 10 consecutive racks in a tournament. He is also known as one of the sport's most controversial players for his outspoken views and his sometimes volatile behavior at tournaments.
Jose Parica is a Filipino professional pool player from Manila, nicknamed "Amang" and "the Giant Killer." As a Filipino Hall of Famer, he pioneered the "Filipino invasion" in the United States in the late 70s, especially in the game of Nine-ball. Also known as "the King" in the Philippines, Parica is considered one of the greatest money players of all time. He became the Billiards Digest Player of the Year in 1997. He scored a perfect match with no mistakes in 9-ball race to 11 format in 1997 at the PBT Legends of Nine-ball.
The World Pool-Billiard Association (WPA) is the international governing body for pool. 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.
LoreeJon Ogonowski-Brown is a professional pool player.
Jasmin Ouschan is an Austrian professional pool player from Klagenfurt, Carinthia. Her first professional competition occurred in 2002, but she did not officially become a professional member of the Women's Professional Billiards Association (WPBA) until 2007. She is currently one of the top-ranked women in the world according to the 2010 prize money list and by the WPBA rankings. At times, she has been ranked as the number one female player in the world. Since 2006, she has been listed among the top-ten women in the annual prize money rankings. Ouschan competes regularly with men on the Euro Tour and in 2008 became the first woman to earn a medal in an open world pool championship.
Mataya started shooting pool at age 11. Within a few years was playing exhibitions with Willie Mosconi. He then won three consecutive Michigan State Championships in 1966, 1967 and 1968. At 21, he won the 1971 Los Angeles 9-Ball Championship. Mataya won multiple titles in his career and in 1989 became a member of the Greater Lansing Area Sports Hall of Fame.
Kim Ga-young is a South Korean female professional pool player who plays on the Women's Professional Billiard Association Tour. Her father began teaching her to play three-cushion billiards when she was about twelve years old. After playing three-cushion for about three years, she started playing nine-ball pool and turned pro at the 2003 BCA Open.
Michael Massey, 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.
Stefano Pelinga is an Italian professional pool player from Rome. He is best known as a multi-year international artistic pool champion, as both an individual and team captain. He has also served as an officer for the Polizia di Stato for 27 years, retiring from police work in 2011, then moving to Las Vegas, Nevada to play pool full-time. Pelinga has served as a board member of the International Artistic Poolplayers Association (IAPA). He was the featured player on the cover of the May 2010 issue of Billiards Digest magazine, which named him one of the world's best trick shot artists. He has been nicknamed "Mr. Trick Shots" and "Il Maestro". Aside from competition, Pelinga performs exhibitions, organizes competitions and raises funds for a variety of charitable organizations with his personal appearances. He was invited to tour in the USA with Paul Gerni, Norway's Lars Riiber, and Japan's Yoshikazu Kimura, and nominated by Paul Gerni for a spot on ESPN's Trick Shot Magic, where he has been featured for over ten years. He won two Trick Shot Magic events, in 2005 and 2007, after a few second places.
Andy Segal, nicknamed "the Magic Man", is a trick-shot pool champion from Huntington, New York. He began as a professional nine-ball player in the 1990s, and was a regular on the Camel Pro Billiard Tour before switching to trick-shot competition in 2002. A full-time pro player since 2007, Segal holds four world records in artistic billiards. He is known for his television competition appearances on ESPN, and has won many such events, including Trick Shot Magic, the World Cup of Trick Shots, the WPA World Artistic Pool Championship, and the Masters Artistic Pool Championship. Segal also performs trick shot exhibitions all over the world, and in films and television.
Robin Bell Dodson is a former professional billiards player from Omaha, Nebraska, US.
Vivian Villarreal is a former professional American pool player. She was the World Pool-Billiard Association world number one women's player for five years, and has twice been runner up in the WPA World Nine-ball Championship.
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