“Billiards” Is Too Broad a Label: Why Every Cueist Comparison Skews at the First Data Line

Last Saturday I watched three matches back to back in a single evening: a snooker final, a 9-ball match on the World Nineball Tour, and a three-cushion match at a World Cup stage held in Vietnam. Three rule sets, three table types, three completely different scoring logics. Then I opened the domestic news feed: all three sat under one word — billiards.

I have kept a spreadsheet tracking young cueists since 2026, the kind I still use when assessing trialists in Hai Phong. Column one is the name. Column two is the discipline. That night I tried to filter by column two and could not: more than half the rows were blank, and the rest read “billiards”. A spreadsheet whose most important filter is empty turns every chart behind it into decoration. I closed the file and understood why I have not dared publish a comparison of Vietnamese cueists against the rest of the world for months.

“Billiards” in Vietnam is an umbrella far too wide. Under it sit carom in its one-cushion and three-cushion branches, pool in 8-ball, 9-ball and 10-ball, snooker, and Chinese 8-ball. These four families share no rule book, no equipment, and most importantly no governing body. Carom belongs to the UMB. Pool sits between the WPA and commercial circuits such as Matchroom’s World Nineball Tour. Snooker is run by the WPBSA and WST. Chinese 8-ball is tied to the Chinese tournament system. Domestically, the Vietnam Billiards & Snooker Federation administers all of it, and precisely because it administers all of it, the media also calls all of it by one word.

The consequence is not linguistic; it is developmental. A carom player drills three-cushion daily against a target moyenne — points per inning. A pool player drills the break, the cue-ball path after the break, and clearing the table in one visit. A snooker player drills long break-building, safety exchanges, and the patience that a 12-foot table with tight pockets turns into a psychological test. Three training regimes, three maturity curves, three cost structures. A club’s investment splits three ways too: a three-cushion table, a pool table and a snooker table cannot serve one another.

Yet headlines still share one phrase: “world champion”.

Everyone knows the metrics differ across disciplines. Few say out loud that they cannot be converted. Each billiards discipline operates on its own measurement system, and every conversion between them is organised fabrication.

Snooker is measured by centuries — 100 points or more in a single visit — and by 147 maximums. In snooker, “break” means a continuous scoring visit. In pool, the same word means the opening shot. One sound, two concepts, with no way to translate one into the other: a 100-point century has no 9-ball equivalent, because 9-ball ends by clearing balls in sequence rather than by accumulating points.

9-ball is measured by break-and-run rate — breaking and clearing the rack in one visit — by dry breaks, and by pot and safety success rates. Here luck carries real weight: a fortunate break can decide a match, so 9-ball analysis must separate the break from the play.

Three-cushion carom is measured by moyenne, best series, average innings per match and finishing rate. An elite three-cushion match lasts only a few dozen innings per player, which makes every inning an unrecoverable asset. A 1.5 points-per-inning average for a solid player cannot be compared with any 9-ball metric, because the units differ and the match objective differs. Chinese 8-ball is measured by break-and-run rate on tables with tighter pockets and larger balls than pool.

Rankings are messier than metrics. “World No. 12” in snooker is a two-year prize-money ranking run by the WST. “World No. 12” in three-cushion is a UMB points position. “World No. 12” in pool is a commercial circuit’s points total. Three number twelves, three meanings, and no conversion table between them. A line reading “a Vietnamese cueist is ranked 12th in the world” without naming the system is an unverified sentence, not necessarily a false one. Suspicion exists not to deny, but to dig deeper before announcing a find.

That is why I treat the tournament name as a mandatory gate rather than an administrative detail. With the tournament name, I know the discipline. With the discipline, I know what to measure. Without it, every technical judgment downstream — from break quality to nerve on the decisive inning — is speculation dressed as analysis. Based on my own match-watching experience, from three-cushion World Cup stages in Ho Chi Minh City to the Hanoi Open Pool Championship that Matchroom has staged in Hanoi since 2026, domestic audiences distinguish disciplines perfectly well at the table. It is the writers who bundle them together.

Bao Phuong Vinh won the three-cushion world championship in 2026, Vietnam’s first milestone in that arena. Tran Quyet Chien has been tied to three-cushion World Cup stages for years. Duong Quoc Hoang belongs to the region’s leading pool group. In snooker, Vietnam has no professional representative inside the WST system. Three different realities, three different pathways, all filed under one headline: “Vietnamese billiards”. A title without a named discipline cannot be valued, because sponsorship money follows audiences, and audiences follow disciplines.

The common claim is that Vietnamese billiards is rising, measured in medals and in the number of international events hosted at home. I do not dispute the facts. I dispute the packaging. The biggest risk today is not a shortage of titles; it is that we cannot classify ourselves. A file with full headings, full tables and full sections, containing not one line that distinguishes three-cushion from 9-ball, is more dangerous than an empty file. Readers see the boxes filled in and believe everything has been covered.

That danger multiplies when writers feel pressure to fill blanks with plausible language. The spreadsheet comes before the dream. I do not draw the future; I measure the dust of time settling on each metric. In my own work, a report that looked complete but was hollow once nearly pushed a trial player in the wrong direction. I found the names worth tracking not because I have sharp eyes, but because I am too lazy to trust ready-made reports.

One more point is overlooked: bundling labels distorts resource allocation. Sponsors pay for audiences, not for medals. Carom has the deepest record of achievement in Vietnam, snooker has the largest broadcast market globally, and 9-ball pool is where commercial tours have poured the most money in recent years. Treat those three as one and any investment decision can be right on paper and wrong at the table. A cueist at twenty is like a young geological layer: handsome on the surface, prone to collapse if the foundation is never checked.

The condition for changing my judgment is simple. Every report needs one extra line: the tournament name. With it, I know the discipline. With the discipline, I know which metrics to use and can start comparing meaningfully. I do not write to praise players. I write to preserve the cultural sediment they leave on the table. If, over the next twelve months, Vietnamese billiards headlines name the discipline in every line, I will be the first to withdraw this suspicion. If there are still only two words, “billiards”, then the argument over who is Vietnam’s number one will remain a conversation among three people speaking three languages, with nobody willing to translate.