Friday evening, 30 October 2026 — Good evening from the Cueball Talk desk. The two Poles who flew in from Doha finally got going in Gandia today, and both are still unbeaten. Wojciech Szewczyk needed every rack, while Daniel Macioł barely let his opponents in. Pia Filler started her women's campaign, Toronto crowns a women's heyball champion tonight, and snooker's race for York gets one last push in Nanjing.
GANDIA — SPANISH OPEN (PREDATOR EURO TOUR, 9-BALL)
Szewczyk does it the hard way
The Euro Tour standings leader and 2026 WPA 10-ball world champion didn't start until this afternoon. He beat Germany's Niklas Dohr 9–5, then went the distance with Slovakia's Timothei Furko and won it 9–8 at hill-hill. That put him into a winners' qualification match against Walter Laikre, which began at 18:30 GMT. When we last checked the EPBF scoreboard at about 19:00 GMT, he led 4–3 in a race to 9. A win takes him straight into Saturday's last 32.
Macioł: 18 racks won, two conceded
Macioł lost the Doha semi-final 11–10 to AJ Manas earlier this week, but he showed no hangover here. He beat Delmon Khwaja 9–2 and then whitewashed Sky van den Berg 9–0. Against Norway's Roger Lysholm in his qualification match he was 8–0 up and on the hill at the last check. Unless something extraordinary happens, he's into the last 32.
Still in play at about 19:00 GMT (winners' qualification, race to 9)
- David Alcaide 4–3 Dennis Laszkowski. Alcaide is still perfect on home soil.
- Francisco Sánchez Ruiz 5–4 Petr Urban
- Oliver Szolnoki (defending champion) 4–2 Alvaro Lamapereira Lage
- Wiktor Zielinski 8–3 Fabrizio Ingrasci
- Mateusz Śniegocki 3–3 Sambor Stachowiak
- Luca Menn 7–6 Marc Bijsterbosch. Menn was last year's runner-up here; he lost the 2025 final 10–3 to Szolnoki.
- Konrad Juszczyszyn 7–6 Tomasz Kaplan
- Ivica Putnik 3–3 Szymon Kural
Loss-side notes
- Furko dropped across to the one-loss side after the Szewczyk match and trailed Norbert Zelasko 3–4 early on.
- Radosław Babica got over his midday defeat to Sánchez Ruiz by beating Nelson Lopes 9–4 to stay alive.
- Dohr, Szewczyk's first victim, edged Martin Kempter 9–8 to keep going.
GANDIA — SPANISH WOMEN'S OPEN
Filler wins her first match
Pia Filler came in at winners' round one and beat Norway's Ine Helvik 7–4. Next for her is Poland's Oliwia Zalewska, who has won 7–2 and 7–3 so far, in a winners' qualification match on Saturday at 10:00 GMT.
Rest of the winners' round one
- Marion Jude 7–4 Li Yongxi. Jude was part of the French women's side that went through Heathrow unbeaten to win blackball team gold on Wednesday.
- Miriam Steiner 7–6 Monika Margeta. This was the closest match of the round, and Margeta drops to the loss side.
- Jiang Teng 7–1 Ana Sevilla Gómez
- Silvia López Fibla 7–1 Encarna García Martínez. López Fibla won European seniors 8-ball gold on this same Gandia stage last week.
- Monika Zabek 7–2 Elena Urquijo
- Ana Gradišnik 7–3 Shirin Volery
- Linnéa Hjalmarström 7–5 Sigrid Glatz
- Oktawia Brodecka 7–4 Gloria Truffa
- Also through: Kamila Khodjaeva, Daria Siranchuk, Ina Kaplan, Maria-Teresa Ropero, Jolien Schuurman and Sandra Baumgartner
TORONTO — NORTH AMERICAN HEYBALL OPEN
The women's final is tonight
Wendy Jans plays Veronika Halliday for the women's title at 21:00 GMT (17:00 in Toronto), live on WPA Live TV. That's after this post goes out, so the result will be in Saturday's morning roundup. The champion gets US$10,000 and the runner-up US$6,000, out of a US$58,000 women's prize fund.
Men's event: unconfirmed
The men's draw was also due to finish today. We couldn't find a confirmed list of semi-finalists or finalists in any published source, so we're not naming anyone. We'll report the men's result once a reliable source has it.
SNOOKER — THE RACE TO YORK
Jones is 16th, and Zhou and Chang are close behind
WST's latest projection confirms that the International Championship in Nanjing (31 October – 7 November, £175,000 to the winner) is the last event that counts before the UK Championship seeding cut-off. Only the top 16 in the rankings on 8 November go straight to York for the final stages (28 November – 6 December). Everyone else has to qualify in Leicester.
- 16th: Jak Jones, £363,900. He has won two ranking titles this season and reached another final.
- 17th: Zhou Yuelong, £5,200 behind.
- 18th: Wuhan Open champion Chang Bingyu, £8,700 behind.
BLACKBALL — THE FINAL COUNT FROM HEATHROW
France's federation has published its corrected final tally from the WPA Blackball World Championships: 11 world titles and 25 medals (11 gold, 7 silver, 7 bronze). Three French teams went unbeaten all week: the women, the over-40s and the under-23s.
The French men's side did not reach the Men's A final. Wales knocked them out 13–11 in the quarter-finals, and Malta then beat Wales 13–3 for bronze. We still haven't seen an official result for the Men's A final itself, so it remains unconfirmed.
CAROM — NEXT STOP YANGGU
The UMB three-cushion World Cup moves on to Yanggu, South Korea, from 2 to 8 November. After that, the last stop of the year is Hurghada, Egypt, from 6 to 12 December.
Coming up overnight and on Saturday
- 21:00 GMT tonight: Jans v Halliday, Toronto heyball women's final
- 01:30 GMT Sat: Nanjing starts, with Jimmy White v Mark Selby
- 10:00 GMT Sat: Filler v Zalewska, Gandia women's winners' qualification
- 11:00 GMT Sat: Gandia men's last 32, race to 11
Scores in this roundup were taken from the EPBF draw and results pages at about 19:00 GMT and may have changed since. Matches marked as in play were unfinished when we checked.
Sources: EPBF draw and results (men's and women's Spanish Open), EPBF news, WPA and Qiaoshi/JOY Billiards (North American Heyball Open), World Snooker Tour ("The Race To York"), Fédération Française de Billard via LSEI, Times of Malta, UMB calendar.
Feature image: “9-Ball Grand Prix Open 2006 LePavillon Biel” by 9-Ball Grand Prix Open, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY 2.5.
