Tuesday morning, 3 November 2026
Morning, all. Nanjing's last 16 broke off at six this morning, and I'll get to it. But we've had snooker at the top of this page for days, so today I'm starting in North Carolina, where the biggest week in American league pool is under way and one of the best women in the game has already won a title. Then it's Korea, where the world number one is chasing a three-cushion record that has stood since 2008. Peru, blackball and India are further down.
Pool: Fefilova-Styer wins the Women's Shootout in Cherokee
The Ultimate Pool USA National Grand Finals started yesterday at Harrah's Cherokee Casino Resort, and the first title of the week has gone to Margarita Fefilova-Styer. Results on Inside Spin show she won the eight-player National Women's Shootout, beating Ashley Benoit in the final.
It was a one-day event: seven matches, all on the TV table, played in the Ultimate Pool format with a 30-minute match clock and a 30-second shot clock, per PoolHall TV's listing for the stream. The champion gets $3,000. Fefilova-Styer started against Emily Duddy in the quarter-finals and then beat Mary Talbot in the semis. On the other side of the draw, Sofia Mast knocked out Amy Beauchamp, who won the Ultimate Pool Women's Masters only last month. Benoit then beat Mast to reach the final.
It's been quite a year for Fefilova-Styer. Per Inside Spin, she's already won the women's World 10-Ball title in the summer and the WPBA Borderline Invitational in October, and now she has a title in a third format, Ultimate Pool's version of 8-ball.
The rest of the week in Cherokee
Per Billiard News, this is the richest week in league pool there's been. The 8-Ball Teams champions get $112,000, and about $282,000 is paid out down to the last 32 teams. What's coming up (local time, five hours behind GMT):
- National Shootout (today and tomorrow): 28 invited players, with every match on the streamed TV table. Scotland's Craig Waddingham is the defending champion. He beat Justin Bergman in last year's final.
- 10-Ball Teams, National Pairs and National Mixed Pairs: start today. The 10-Ball Teams title is worth $35,000.
- Opens: the National Open runs from Thursday to Sunday, the National Women's Open from Friday and the National Junior Open over the weekend. The organisers say all the open events have sold out.
- 8-Ball Teams final: Saturday.
The feature matches are streamed on the Ultimate Pool USA YouTube channel, and every draw is updated live on DigitalPool.
Three-cushion: Cho chases Jaspers' 2008 record in Yanggu
Last night I wrote about two 16-year-olds getting through the first qualifying round of the Yanggu World Cup. There's a bigger story further up the draw. Cho Myung-woo, the world number one, has won three World Cups this season (Bogotá, Ankara and Lier). Newspim point out that if he wins in Yanggu, he'll be the first player to win four in a single season since Dick Jaspers in 2008. He'd also win the Korean World Cup for the second year running, after beating Marco Zanetti 50–30 in last year's final in Gwangju, per Billiards & Sports.
He's not playing yet. Cho is seeded into the 32-player main draw, which starts in groups of four on Friday. The UMB's seeds also include Eddy Merckx, Zanetti, Jaspers, Martin Horn and Heo Jung-han. Billiards & Sports say Torbjörn Blomdahl is in Yanggu too. The UMB have a reminder of how this season has gone: Cho won Bogotá, Ankara and Lier, Frédéric Caudron won Ho Chi Minh City and Merckx won Porto. Merckx (2023), Jaspers (2024) and Cho (2025) won the last three World Cups held in Korea.
There are 149 players in the event, the first three-cushion World Cup held in Gangwon Province. Today is the second qualifying round (PPQ). The first-round group winners from yesterday are in it, led by Kim Dae-hyun with an average of 1.538, along with Jeong Yeok-keun and Ecuador's Luis Aveiga, who both averaged 1.395, and Japan's Satoru Yoneyama and Kazuhiro Katou, per the UMB. The UMB also note that eight of the nine best qualifiers on day one were Korean. "Averages well over 1.000 on the first day: it's the new normal," they wrote. The third round is tomorrow, the final qualifying round is on Thursday, and the semi-finals and final are on Sunday, with the final at 18:00 local time (09:00 GMT). Every match is on Soop.
Nanjing: the 06:00 GMT session
Now the snooker. I'm writing this at about 07:45 GMT, after the mid-session interval. Here's how the four matches stood, according to the Snooker Database live scores and TNT Sports' live blog:
- Zhao Xintong 3–1 Aaron Hill: after yesterday's re-spotted black, Zhao made it look easy. He made a century in the opening frame and then a break of 82, and was 3–0 up in about 40 minutes of playing time, per TNT Sports. Hill got on the board with a 103. They were well into frame five as I wrote this.
- Oliver Lines 2–3 Kyren Wilson: it was 2–2 at the interval and Wilson has nosed in front. Wilson won the Northern Ireland Open title only last week.
- Si Jiahui 3–1 Hossein Vafaei: Si led by two at the interval. He made two centuries in his 6–0 win over Liu Hongyu yesterday.
- Yuan Sijun v Chang Bingyu: 2–1 to Yuan at the break and level at 2–2 last time I looked. This one matters for the rankings. SnookerHQ point out that Chang has moved up to provisional 16th, the place that gets a seeding for the UK Championship, and that all six players chasing that spot are playing each other today: Chang v Yuan, Ding v Maguire and Si v Vafaei.
11:30 GMT session: Stephen Maguire v Ding Junhui, Fan Zhengyi v Liam Davies, Wang Xinbo v Marco Fu, and Mark Williams v John Higgins. Williams and Higgins both turned professional in 1992, and they're still meeting in the last 16 of ranking events more than 30 years later. All of today's matches are best of 11. The quarter-finals are tomorrow. TNT Sports and HBO Max have it in the UK, Eurosport across much of Europe and WST Play elsewhere. I'll have the finished results at lunchtime.
Heyball: the Pan-American Open starts in Arequipa
The second Pan-American Heyball Open gets going in Arequipa, Peru today. Players check in and the opening ceremony is this evening at the Coliseo Arequipa, and the first matches are tomorrow at 10:00 local time (15:00 GMT), per the event listing on CueScore. The finals are on Saturday. There are 64 men and 64 women playing for a total of $116,000, with $58,000 for each event, per the Peruvian paper Ahora. The organisers are the Pan American Billiards Confederation and the Peruvian federation, with WPA backing. It's double elimination down to a single-elimination knockout, and matches are races to seven.
The men's entry list on CueScore has plenty of names British readers will know, including Jordan Shepherd, Arfan Dad, Craig Brown, Stephen Ellis and Alex O'Donoghue. Poland's Radosław Babica is playing too. Ahora's profile of Peru's Victoria Vásquez, from Huánuco, is a reminder that this event also means a lot to the home players.
Blackball: the IPA's finals season
- IPA Amateur Series Grand Final (Saturday and Sunday): at the Royal Sports Lounge. It's double elimination to a single-elimination last 16, with races to eight on the winners' side, per CueScore. The draw is already out, and the final is at 20:30 on Sunday.
- IPA Tour Grand Final, Professional (13 to 15 November): at the Comis Hotel. There are 63 players, it's single elimination and every match is a race to eight. The entry list includes new world champion Gareth Hibbott, plus Jamie Burnett, Paul Harkness, Robert Stephen, Billy Snaddon and Lee Shepherd.
India: Gurbaxani wins Maharashtra's 6-red title
In Mumbai, former professional Kreishh Gurbaxani beat Rrahul Sachdev 6–1 in the final of the Billiards and Snooker Association of Maharashtra's 6-red state ranking event, PuneDiary reported. Sachdev is the reigning Maharashtra 15-red champion. Gurbaxani earned his place on the World Snooker Tour through Asia-Oceania Q School in 2024. The event was played at three Mumbai venues: Malabar Hill Club, the NSCI and Khar Gymkhana. Players from all over the state took part, including Pune's Suraj Rathi.
Mosconi Cup watch
The Mosconi Cup is 24 days away, in Orlando from 27 to 30 November, and I still haven't seen Team USA's line-up confirmed. Thorsten Hohmann turned down the automatic place he earned at the Philippines Open. "I have to be honest about my game," he wrote in his statement, saying he hasn't found the same "freedom and consistency" under tournament pressure that he has in practice. That left Shane Van Boening and Tyler Styer as the confirmed automatic qualifiers, with Fedor Gorst next on the list, per Rack 9 and Absolute Pool. Johan Ruijsink still has two wildcards to pick. Europe, captained by Niels Feijen, have won six in a row.
Also coming up
- PBA Team League: round four, day four, is being played in Goyang today. Leaders Crown Haitai played Hana Card at noon local time, and four more matches follow. Round four finishes on Sunday.
- Pool: WNT Universal Open Ho Chi Minh City (11 to 15 November), then Bangkok (17 to 21 November).
- Snooker: Champion of Champions, 9 to 15 November. The IBSF World Championships are in Indore from 12 to 21 November.
So, can anyone stop Fefilova-Styer this autumn? Will Cho match Jaspers' 2008 season? And will the class of '92 serve up another one at lunchtime? Let me know below.
— Reggie
Feature image: “Pool 8 ball” by Evan Delshaw, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY 2.0.
