Pankaj Arjan Advani is an Indian billiards and former professional snooker player. He is a 25-time International Billiards and Snooker Federation (IBSF) world champion. He has won 17 billiards world titles, the IBSF World Billiards Championship on 16 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.
The United States Snooker Association (USSA) is the internationally recognized governing body of the sport of snooker in the United States, with its current headquarters registered in Berkeley, California.
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.
Saleh Mohammad Saleh is a former professional snooker player from Afghanistan. He represented Pakistan between 1988 and 2006. He reached the final of the IBSF World Snooker Championship in 2003 and won two medals at 2002 Asian Games.
The World Billiards Championship is an international cue sports tournament in the discipline of English billiards, organised by World Billiards, a subsidiary of the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA). In its various forms, and usually as a single competition, the title is one of the oldest sporting world championships, having been contested since 1870.
The IBSF World Snooker Championship is the premier non-professional snooker tournament in the world. The event series is sanctioned by the International Billiards and Snooker Federation. A number of IBSF champions have gone on to successful careers in the Pro ranks, notably Jimmy White (1980), James Wattana (1988), Ken Doherty (1989), Stuart Bingham (1996), Marco Fu (1997), Stephen Maguire (2000) and Mark Allen (2004). Both Ken Doherty and Stuart Bingham have gone on to win the professional World Snooker Championship.
Igor Almeida Figueiredo is a Brazilian former professional snooker player.
Sam Craigie is an English professional snooker player from Newcastle. He enjoyed a successful junior career before turning professional in 2011.
Hossein Vafaei Ayouri is an Iranian professional snooker player. He is the first professional player from Iran. He won his first ranking title at the 2022 Snooker Shoot Out, beating Mark Williams 1–0 (71–0) in the final.
Lu Ning is a professional snooker player from the People's Republic of China.
The 2012–13 snooker season was a series of snooker tournaments played between 16 May 2012 and 6 May 2013. The season featured two new ranking events: the Wuxi Classic and the International Championship. The tour had a record five ranking events in China, and three new PTC events in Asia. The tour also visited Bulgaria for the first time in its history, and returned to Poland, Belgium and Australia. Before the start of the season World Snooker requested every player to sign a players contract, that would allow players to choose which events they want to enter – no player was forced to play in any event. At the end of the season Mark Selby was named the World Snooker Player of the Year, the Snooker Writers' Player of the Year and the Fans' Player of the Year and Ian Burns the Rookie of the Year. Ronnie O'Sullivan received the "Performance of the Year" for winning his fifth World title after playing just one competitive match during the season. Jimmy Robertson's 57 break in just 130 seconds at the Snooker Shoot Out received the "Magic Moment of the Year" award. Terry Griffiths, Joe Johnson, Peter Ebdon, Ken Doherty, Graeme Dott, Shaun Murphy and Neil Robertson were inducted into the Hall of Fame.
Lucky Vatnani is an Indian former professional snooker player. He is from Hyderabad, India, but was based in Sheffield, England during his snooker career.
Zhao Xintong is a Chinese professional snooker player who is currently suspended from the World Snooker Tour. He attracted attention as a teenager, with a number of top players commenting on his potential in the sport. He joined the professional tour in 2016 and won his first ranking title and first Triple Crown title at the 2021 UK Championship, defeating Luca Brecel 10–5 in the final. With this win, he entered the top 16 in the world rankings for the first time and became eligible for his first Masters. He won his second ranking title at the 2022 German Masters when he whitewashed Yan Bingtao 9–0 in the final, becoming only the third player, after Steve Davis and Neil Robertson, to win a two-session ranking final without conceding a frame.
Jackson Page is a Welsh professional snooker player. He is a former European U-21 champion and the former Under-18 World Snooker Champion and in 2017 also became the Under-18 European Snooker Champion.
Soheil Vahedi is an Iranian former professional snooker player.
The 2018–19 snooker season was a series of professional snooker tournaments played between 10 May 2018 and 23 June 2019. The season was made up of ranking tournaments, non-ranking tournaments and variant tournaments. In total, 54 events were competed in the 2018–19 season, beginning with the pro–am 2018 Vienna Open, and ending with the 2019 World Snooker Championship.
The 2019 World Snooker Championship was a professional snooker tournament that took place from 20 April to 6 May 2019 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. It was the 43rd consecutive year the World Snooker Championship had been held at the Crucible, and the 20th and final ranking event of the 2018–19 snooker season. Qualifying for the tournament took place from 10 to 17 April 2019 at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield. Sports betting company Betfred sponsored the event.
Joe Grech was a Maltese snooker and billiards player. A professional snooker player for various years from 1988 to 2000, he won the IBSF World Billiards Championship in 1997. First competing as an amateur in the 1979s, he competed in amateur and professional snooker and billiards championships in a career spanning nearly 40 years. He won the Maltese English Billiards Championship on 21 occasions including 13 successive titles from 2003 to 2015.
Ahmed Aly Elsayed is an American snooker player and six time winner of the United States Amateur Championship. He will turn professional at the start of the 2023/2024 season. He earned a two-year tour card after winning the Pan American Amateur Championship in October 2022.
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.
Steven Wong