Three Billiard Tables and the Money-Talent Paradox: Vietnam Is Strongest Where the Least Money Flows

On June 6, 2026, the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA) announced what is regarded as the heaviest ruling in professional snooker history: ten Chinese players were suspended with varying sanctions, and Liang Wenbo and Li Hang received lifetime bans. I read that ruling one evening in Nha Trang. What made me stop was not the number of months of suspension, but a line in the background section: the tournament system these young cueists competed in had total prize money too small relative to living costs, and that financial gap was fertile ground for betting.

At the same time, nearly eight thousand kilometres away, I was following a three-cushion billiards tournament through a phone screen. A Vietnamese cueist beat a European opponent with a diagonal cushion run that seemed almost impossible. No packed arena, no million-dollar contract, no international television cameras. Just a table exactly 2.84 metres long and a cue.

That contrast is why I am writing this piece. Not to praise the Vietnamese, and not to complain about money. But to answer a specific question: why can a country produce world-class carom cueists, yet remain nearly invisible in the money flow of this sport?

To answer that, first tell me which branch the ball is potted in, and how long the table is. Because billiards is not a single sport. It is a family of sports, and within that family there are at least three major branches whose rules, technique and commercial ecosystems have almost nothing to do with one another.

The first branch is snooker. This is the branch best known to the general public, mainly thanks to the United Kingdom. A snooker table is 3.57 metres long and 1.78 metres wide, with six pockets plus fifteen red balls and six coloured balls. A frame is not decided by potting balls, but by total points. The most important tournament in this branch, the World Championship, has been held at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield since 2026 and has almost never left England. This branch has the longest television history, the tightest professional ranking system, and a legendary generation known as the "Class of 92": Ronnie O'Sullivan, John Higgins and Mark Williams.

The second branch is pool, with two popular variants: eight-ball and nine-ball. Pool tables are smaller than snooker tables, usually 2.54 metres long, with wider pockets and much faster frames. This branch is tied to bar culture and the American tradition, and in recent years it has been the most aggressively commercially restructured, under the hand of Matchroom Sport, the company of the Hearn family. In 2026, Matchroom launched the World Nineball Tour, bringing rankings, tournaments and prize money into a professional framework the pool branch had largely lacked.

The third branch is carom, most popularly three-cushion. A carom table has no pockets. The player must make the cue ball strike two object balls, and before striking the second object ball, the cue ball must touch at least three cushions of the table. There is no pocket to aim at, only geometry. This is the branch Vietnam is strongest in, and also the least moneyed of the three. Its governing body is the Union Mondiale de Billard (UMB), whose tournament system is concentrated mainly in Europe, Japan, South Korea and Vietnam.

These three branches do not compete with each other on the same field. A top snooker cueist cannot automatically switch to winning three-cushion, and vice versa. The technique differs from the ground up. Snooker demands control of the cue ball at short distances with extremely fine spin, because pockets are narrow and balls are small. Pool demands cue speed and the ability to break the pack open. Carom demands geometric calculation across many cushion runs, and control of cue-ball speed over long distances. Someone strong in one branch can play another at an average level, but to win a title you almost have to be born into that exact branch.

The crux is here: a country's billiards strength is not determined by talent, but by whether that country sits inside the flow of television and betting money.

Look at the money flow. In snooker, a leading cueist like Ronnie O'Sullivan has accumulated more than 14 million pounds in career prize money, a figure no carom cueist in the world can reach. The snooker World Championship carries several million pounds in total prize money, and the champion takes most of it. In pool, Matchroom is pushing prize money up fast, turning the World Nineball Tour into a system players can make a living from. In carom, even UMB World Cup events carry total prize money many times smaller, and most cueists need a side job or live on local sponsorship.

In other words, money in billiards does not follow talent. It follows the television market and the betting market. Snooker has British television and a long betting history. Pool has the American market and a huge player community. Carom has the most beautiful technique of the three, yet lacks both of those things. And Vietnam, the strongest nation in carom, sits exactly at the intersection of that paradox.

In the world carom scene, the names that have dominated for decades come from Europe: Dick Jaspers of the Netherlands, Torbjörn Blomdahl of Sweden, Frédéric Caudron of Belgium. They are cueists whose training systems and tournament systems lie at the very core of the UMB. Vietnam, at the geographical edge of that system, has still produced a generation of cueists able to face them directly. Names such as Tran Quyet Chien, Ngo Dinh Nai and Ma Minh Cam have become familiar to domestic carom fans through World Cup events held in Ho Chi Minh City.

But this is where I want to pause, because this is where data and emotion often drift apart.

When a Vietnamese cueist wins a carom World Cup, domestic media covers it heavily. And that is right, because the win is real. But there is a question I always ask myself after such moments: what did that win change in the money structure of this sport? The answer, if you look at the numbers, is usually: very little. A carom World Cup title brings prize money enough to cover a few months of training, not enough to change a cueist's life the way a snooker title can.

I know some will object: money is not everything. True. But when analysing a sports ecosystem, I cannot ignore the money flow, because the money flow decides who can stay in the profession, who has to leave it, and who is forced to seek other income, including illegitimate income. The 2026 WPBSA ruling is a reminder that when the tournament system does not pay enough to sustain players, temptation appears.

There is another piece few Vietnamese notice: the Chinese eight-ball branch. This is a pool variant played on a pocketed table but with rules closer to snooker, and over the past decade it has become a branch with surprisingly high prize money thanks to the Chinese market. This creates a pull effect: some young snooker cueists choose to switch to Chinese eight-ball for the prize money and for less competition. This is the clearest example of how money flow can reshape an entire generation of cueists, regardless of tradition.

For Vietnam, this piece matters. If a young Vietnamese cueist has talent, the easiest door to open may not be carom, but pool or eight-ball, where money flows more strongly. And that is why I say Vietnam's carom position could be eroded from within, by its own best players, rather than by foreign opponents.

In governance, the picture is also fragmented. Snooker is governed by the WPBSA and World Snooker Tour. Professional pool is heavily influenced by Matchroom. Carom is governed by the UMB. No single body coordinates all three branches, which means there is no common strategy for this sport at global level. Each branch looks after itself, and whichever branch has the strongest market decides the rules of the whole ecosystem.

In rankings, each branch has its own system. Snooker uses cumulative ranking points by event, pool uses Matchroom's system, carom uses the UMB's. This makes comparing who is the best in the world at billiards a technically meaningless question. There is no common ranking, and there never will be, as long as the three branches play on three different kinds of table.

With carom, I usually analyse through geometry. A good cushion run is not a lucky shot. It is the result of correctly calculating the angle of incidence, the angle of reflection, and the cue-ball speed after each cushion contact. When I rewatch a carom passage, I do not count points. I count how many cushions the cue ball has passed through, and estimate the distance it must cover between two contacts. I do not watch billiards for entertainment; I watch to find the moment when the position begins to collapse.

When I read a carom ranking, I always check it against video. Once I saw an index of a cueist's success rate on difficult shots, and it was too high to believe. I rewatched the three most recent matches, counted by hand, and realised the figure had lumped easy shots into the same group. If this data is right, it must hold up against video. When it does not hold up, I discard it. A style of play is only trustworthy when I can find its flaw.

The billiards value chain can be divided into three tiers. The upstream tier covers facilities, training halls, tables, cues, balls and equipment. The midstream tier covers cueists, tournaments and media. The downstream tier covers sponsorship, derivatives and the collectibles market.

In Vietnam, the upstream tier is developing strongly. Billiard halls are springing up across cities, and this is one of the densest facility networks in the region. The midstream tier, with its top carom generation, is also at a high level. But the downstream tier is almost empty. There is no large sponsorship system, no derivatives, no meaningful collectibles market.

This creates a structural paradox: Vietnam has a solid lower and middle tier, but no upper tier to support them. An ecosystem is only durable when all three tiers link together. When the downstream is empty, money cannot return to the upstream, and cueists must live on unstable income.

On equipment, this is a market where Vietnam is mostly a buyer, not a seller. High-quality tables, cues and balls come largely from Europe, Japan and China. This is a value-added weakness: most of the chain's profit sits in equipment manufacturing, and Vietnam barely takes part in it.

On media and sponsorship, carom in Vietnam survives mainly on domestic events and a few local sponsors. There is no major international television contract, no global sponsorship package. This caps cueists' earnings and, in turn, caps how many people dare to take up the profession.

Vietnamese audiences follow billiards mainly through online platforms and social media. This is a bright spot, because it shows the demand to watch is real. But viewing demand does not automatically turn into money without a rights and sponsorship structure attached. A match can be watched hundreds of thousands of times, but if nobody pays for those broadcast rights, the cueist still receives nothing.

Now comes the part I think few want to hear.

There is a common belief in sport that simply adjusting at the right moment is enough to catch up. The lesson from big football teams is often applied wholesale to billiards: be patient, follow the process, and the moment will come. But that formula has a precondition people forget: the foundation must be stable first. In Vietnamese billiards, the technical foundation is stable, but the commercial foundation is not. And adjusting timing on an unstable commercial foundation only creates short peaks that fall back down.

The bigger blind spot lies elsewhere. When people talk about billiards development, they often mention that the women's game is receiving more attention. On the surface, that sounds positive. But if you look at the actual money flow, most of that attention comes from corporate social responsibility programmes and ESG indices, not from real market demand. Women's billiards is put on stage as a prop for organisations to prove their commitment, and then the money withdraws once the media campaign ends. This is not sustainable development; it is a form of advertising.

For Vietnamese billiards, I believe a similar risk exists. A few women's tournaments are held, a few photos are posted, a few statements about gender equality are made. But without an annual tournament system, without a living wage in prize money, and without a clear career path, that is only form. And that form can make people believe the problem is being solved, while in reality it is only being covered up.

Another blind spot concerns how we measure success. We tend to count titles. But the number of titles does not reveal the durability of an ecosystem. A country can have a few world champions but no tournament system strong enough to sustain the next generation. That is the case I fear for Vietnamese carom: the peak exists, but the base is thin.

I must also say not everything is cause for worry. Vietnam has an advantage many countries lack: a billiard-hall culture. This is a social network that has existed for a long time, where young people can access the sport without a formal academy system. This advantage is very hard to copy, and it is the foundation for any long-term strategy.

So what will change in the coming years?

I have no certain answer, because billiards is a sport whose money structure depends on markets Vietnam does not control. But I have one judgement. If Matchroom succeeds with the World Nineball Tour, money in the pool branch will rise, and it may pull a wave of young Vietnamese cueists toward pool. If that happens, carom, the branch Vietnam is strongest in, could be left behind by its own best players.

The question I leave for the next time I watch: can a country hold its position in a billiards branch that global money does not flow into, or will talent ultimately follow the money?

I will answer by rewatching the video, recounting the shots, and rechecking the numbers. Not to be sure I am right, but to be sure I am not fooling myself.