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, 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.
Pool is the name given to a series of cue sports played on a billiard table. The table has six pockets along the rails, into which balls are shot. Of the many different pool games, the most popular 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 it 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 an American professional pool player. She was nicknamed the Black Widow 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 Teresa Fisher is an English professional pool, snooker and English billiards player.
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.
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.
Allison Fisher is an English professional pool and former professional snooker player.
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. WPA is headquartered in Gauteng, South Africa.
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.
Jimmy Mataya. 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.
Vivian Villarreal is an American former professional 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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