In 2018, championships were held across three continents to determine the best players in major

cue sports Cue sports are a wide variety of Game of skill, games of skill played with a cue stick, which is used to strike billiard balls and thereby cause them to move around a Baize, cloth-covered billiards table, table bounded by elastic bumpers known a ...

, including

snooker Snooker (pronounced , ) is a cue sport played on a rectangular Billiard table#Snooker and English billiards tables, billiards table covered with a green cloth called baize, with six Billiard table#Pockets 2, pockets: one at each corner and ...

pool Pool may refer to: Bodies of water * Swimming pool, usually an artificial structure containing a large body of water intended for swimming * Reflecting pool, a shallow pool designed to reflect a structure and its surroundings * Tide pool, a roc ...

, and

English billiards English billiards, called simply billiards in the UK and in many former British colonies, is a cue sport that combines the aspects of carom billiards and pool. Two (one white and one yellow) and a red are used. Each player or team uses a diffe ...

. While these are mostly single player sports, some matches and tournaments are held as either doubles or as team events. The snooker season runs between May and April; the pool and billiards seasons run through the calendar year. Four men's adult world championships were held in 2018, Mark Williams won the

World Snooker Championship The World Snooker Championship, or simply known as the World Championship, is the longest-running and most prestigious tournament in professional snooker. It is also the richest event to date with a total prize money of £2,395,000, including ...

, Joshua Filler holding the

WPA World Nine-ball Championship The WPA World Nine-ball Championship is an annual professional nine-ball pool tournament contested since 1990. The championship is sanctioned by the World Pool Association (WPA) and principally sponsored and organized by Matchroom Sport, who pro ...

, Sourav Kothari the World Billiards Championship, and

Dick Jaspers Dingeman Jacobus Johannes "Dick" Jaspers (pronounced yas-pers) (born 23 July 1965) is a Dutch professional carom billiards player who specializes in the three-cushion event. Early life Jaspers started playing billiards when he was three years o ...

winning the

UMB World Three-cushion Championship The UMB World Three-cushion Championship is a professional carom billiards tournament in the discipline of three-cushion billiards Three-cushion billiards, also called three-cushion carom, is a form of carom billiards. The object of the game ...

. Three women's world championships were also held, with

Han Yu Han Yu (; 76825 December 824), courtesy name Tuizhi (), and commonly known by his posthumous name Han Wengong (韓文公), was an essayist, Confucian scholar, poet, and government official during the Tang dynasty who significantly influenced t ...

winning the

WPA Women's World Nine-ball Championship The WPA Women's World Nine-ball Championship is an annual pool tournament in the discipline of nine-ball. The most successful player is Allison Fisher Allison Fisher (born 24 February 1968) is an English American professional pool and former ...

, the World Billiards Championship being won by

Emma Bonney Emma Bonney is an English world champion player of English billiards, and snooker player. She has won the World Women's Billiards Championship title a record thirteen times. Emma Bonney is the only player to be ranked number 1 in the world at b ...

and

Ng On-yee Ng On-yee (; born 17 November 1990) is a Hong Kong professional snooker player who has won three IBSF World Snooker Championships and three World Women's Snooker Championship, World Women's Snooker world championships. She held the number one ...

winning the

World Women's Snooker Championship The World Women's Snooker Championship (known as the Women's World Open from 1976 Women's World Open (snooker), 1976 to 1981 Women's World Open (snooker), 1981 and the World Ladies Snooker Championship from 1983 Women's World Snooker Championsh ...

. The snooker Triple Crown featured

Ronnie O'Sullivan Ronald Antonio O'Sullivan (born 5 December 1975) is an English professional snooker player. Widely recognised as one of the most talented and accomplished players in snooker history, he has won the World Snooker Championship seven times, a m ...

winning the

UK Championship The UK Championship is a professional ranking snooker tournament. It is one of snooker's prestigious Triple Crown events, along with the World Championship and the Masters. It is usually held at the Barbican in York, England. Ronnie O'Sull ...

, while the Masters was won by

Mark Allen Mark may refer to: In the Bible * Mark the Evangelist (5–68), traditionally ascribed author of the Gospel of Mark * Gospel of Mark, one of the four canonical gospels and one of the three synoptic gospels Currencies * Mark (currency), a currenc ...

. In pool, the

Mosconi Cup The Mosconi Cup is an annual nine-ball pool tournament contested since 1994 between teams representing Europe and the United States. Named after American pool player Willie Mosconi, the event is comparable to the Ryder Cup in golf and the We ...

was won by the US team, with

Skyler Woodward Skyler Woodward (born May 7, 1993) is an American professional pool player. At the 2017 World Cup of Pool, he was the runner up, alongside Shane Van Boening. Woodward has represented the United States each year in the Mosconi Cup since the 2015 ...

as the

most valuable player In team sports, a most valuable player (MVP) award is an honor typically bestowed upon an individual (or individuals, in the instance of a tie) whose individual performance is the greatest in an entire league, for a particular competition, or ...

. Peter Gilchrist won seven events in billiards, while

Reanne Evans Reanne Evans (born 25 October 1985) is an English professional snooker player and regular pundit on televised snooker broadcasts. Widely recognised as the most successful female player in the sport's history, she has won the World Women's Sno ...

won six women's snooker events. The events below are professional and pro-am cue sports tournaments from the year of 2018, as well as select amateur snooker events used for qualification to the

World Snooker Tour The World Snooker Tour (WST) is the main professional snooker tour, consisting of about 128 players competing on a circuit of up to 28 tournaments each season. It is administered by World Snooker Ltd, the commercial arm of professional snooker, ...

Pool

The cue sport

encapsulates several disciplines, such as

straight pool Straight pool, which is also called 14.1 continuous and 14.1 rack, is a Cue sports, cue sport in which two competing players attempt to as many s as possible without playing a . The game was the primary version of Pool (cue sports), pool play ...

eight-ball Eight-ball (also spelled 8-ball or eightball, and sometimes called solids and stripes, spots and stripes, bigs and smalls, big ones and little ones, or rarely highs and lows) is a discipline of Pool (cue sports), pool played on a billiard tabl ...

, and

nine-ball Nine-ball (sometimes written 9-ball) is a discipline of the cue sport pool. The game's origins are traceable to the 1920s in the United States. It is played on a rectangular billiard table with at each of the four corners and in the middle o ...

. Joshua Filler won the

, while the

World Cup of Pool The World Cup of Pool is an annual international single-elimination tournament for doubles teams in nine-ball pool competition. The Philippines holds the record for World Cup wins, winning the title on four occasions. In 2023, they also became t ...

was won by China. In events where there was more than one competition, (m) refers to men, (f) to female, (s) to seniors and (u21) refers to under-21 competitions.

Euro Tour

The

Euro Tour The Euro Tour is a series of professional pool events set around Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlanti ...

is a professional nine-ball series run across Europe by the

European Pocket Billiard Federation The European Pocket Billiard Federation (EPBF) is the European governing body for pocket billiards. EPBF is the European regional affiliate member of the World Pool-Billiard Association (WPA). Events The federation holds the European Championship ...

. The season featured seven events, with six tournaments for each gender.

English billiards

The

season ran from August to July. Sourav Kothari and

won the World Billiards Championships for each gender.

World Billiards Open

Carom billiards

Three-cushion billiards Three-cushion billiards, also called three-cushion carom, is a form of carom billiards. The object of the game is to the off both while contacting the at least three times before contacting the second object ball. A point is scored for each s ...

competitions overseen by the Union Mondal de Billiard (UMB)

Three-Cushion World Cup

The

Three-Cushion World Cup The Three-Cushion World Cup is an international tournament series in three-cushion billiards, which is held every year since 1986 between three and ten times a year. History The World Cup was founded in 1985 by German Werner Bayer, a carom bil ...

is an annual

three-cushion Three-cushion billiards, also called three-cushion carom, is a form of carom billiards. The object of the game is to the off both while contacting the at least three times before contacting the second object ball. A point is scored for each s ...

series of tournaments hosted by the UMB. Seven events were held, with the overall winner being Frédéric Caudron.

Snooker

The World Snooker Tour season begins in July and ends in May. Mark Williams won his third

by defeating

John Higgins John Higgins (born 18 May 1975) is a Scottish professional snooker player from Wishaw in North Lanarkshire. Since turning professional in 1992, he has won 33 ranking titles, placing him in third position on the List of snooker players by num ...

18–16 in the final.

also won her third

Women's World Snooker Championship The World Women's Snooker Championship (known as the Women's World Open from 1976 to 1981 and the World Ladies Snooker Championship from 1983 to 2018) is the longest-running and most prestigious tournament on the World Women's Snooker Tour. Sta ...

with a 5–0 win over

Maria Catalano Maria Catalano (born 27 February 1982) is an English snooker player from Dudley. She began playing snooker at 15 and received coaching from her first cousin, professional player Ronnie O'Sullivan. She made her World Women's Snooker Tour debut i ...

in the final.

World ranking

Non-ranking

Challenge Tour

The

Challenge Tour The Challenge Tour, currently titled as the HotelPlanner Tour for sponsorship reasons and also sometimes referred to as the European Challenge Tour, is the second-tier men's professional golf tour in Europe. It is operated by the PGA European To ...

is a secondary non-professional snooker tour with events for invited players. Eight tournaments were played from the ten events in the 2018–19 season in 2018.

World Seniors Tour

The World Seniors Tour is an amateur series open to players aged 40 and over. There were four events in the 2018 World Seniors Tour. The

World Seniors Championship The World Seniors Championship is an invitational seniors snooker tournament which has been played under different formats. As of 2020 the minimum age is 40, but it was 45 in 2011 and 2012. History The event was first held in 1991 with 16 p ...

was won by Aaron Canavan.

Women's snooker

Amateur snooker championships

References

External links

World Pool Association Official Website

World Billiards Official Website

World Snooker Official Website
{{featured list 2018 sport-related lists Cue sports by year