Cue sports are a wide variety of games of skill played with a cue, 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 are also collectively referred to as billiards, though this term has more specific connotations in some varieties of English.
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.
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 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".
Francisco Bustamante 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 70 International titles and is considered one of the best pool players of all time.
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.
The following is a glossary of traditional English-language terms used in the three overarching cue sports disciplines: carom billiards referring to the various carom games played on a billiard table without pockets; pool, which denotes a host of games played on a table with six pockets; and snooker, played on a large pocket table, and which has a sport culture unto itself distinct from pool. There are also games such as English billiards that include aspects of multiple disciplines.
Alejandro Salvador "Alex" Pagulayan is a Filipino-born Canadian professional pool player. His nickname is "the Lion", given to him by the great Cliff Thorburn, former World Snooker champion. Pagulayan was born in Cabagan, Isabela, Philippines and was raised in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In 2012, Pagulayan became a citizen of Canada and now resides in Toronto.
Dennis Orcollo, sometimes called Dennis Orcullo, is a Filipino professional pool player, nicknamed "Surigao" and "RoboCop". He has been called "The Money-Game King".
Jeffrey de Luna is a Filipino professional pool player from Manila. De Luna reached the semifinals of the 2019 U.S. Open Pool Championship, but would lose to eventual champion Joshua Filler of Germany.
Lee Vann Corteza, also spelled Lee Van Corteza, is a Filipino professional pool player. He is nicknamed "The Slayer", and started playing pool in 1993.
Mika Immonen is a Finnish professional Hall of Fame pool player, nicknamed "The Iceman."
The U.S. Open Pool Championship, formerly the U.S. Open Nine-ball Championship, is an annual professional men's nine-ball pool tournament that began in its current form in 1976. The U.S. Open is one of the most sought-after titles in nine-ball and in pool generally. Traditionally, winners of the U.S. Open are given a green blazer and are awarded free entry fees to all future U.S. Open tournaments.
Allen Hopkins is an American professional pocket billiards (pool) player, professional billiards color commentator and BCA Hall of Fame inductee. He promotes multiple annual pool events and still competes as a professional contender.
Luther Clement Lassiter Jr., nicknamed Wimpy, was an American pool player from Elizabeth City, North Carolina. The winner of seven world pocket billiard championships and numerous other titles, Lassiter is most well known for his wizardry in the game of nine-ball and is widely considered one of the greatest players in history, He was inducted into the Billiard Congress of America's Hall of Fame in 1983. That same year, he was also inducted into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame. He was ranked number 9 on the Billiards Digest 50 Greatest Players of the Century.
William "Bill" Paul Staton, was an American professional pool player and restaurateur, nicknamed Weenie Beenie.
Danny DiLiberto is an American retired professional pool player nicknamed "Buffalo Danny".
Darren Appleton is an English professional pool player, best known for playing Eight-ball, Nine-ball and Ten-ball pool.
Roberto Gomez is a professional pocket billiards player from Zamboanga City, Philippines. He competed in the final of both the 2007 WPA World Nine-ball Championships, and the 2007 World Cup of Pool. Gomez was the first qualifier to reach the final of the WPA World Nine-ball Championships.
The ACUI Collegiate Pocket Billiards National Championship, in recent years known more specifically as the ACUI Collegiate Nine-ball National Championship, was an amateur United States annual pool competition for university and college students, organized by the Association of College Unions International (ACUI). It was founded in 1937, and was one of ACUI's longest-running programs. In June 2020, the ACUI made the decision to discontinue their National Collegiate Pocket Billiards program.
Cliff Joyner 
Jose Parica 
Darren Appleton 
Alex Pagulayan 
