Professional tournaments in table-top

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 ...

took place in 2020. These events include

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 ...

disciplines and

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

. Whilst these are traditionally singles sports, some matches and tournaments are held as doubles or as teams. The snooker season runs between May and April, whilst the pool and billiards seasons is listed over the calendar year. Due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, the season was disrupted with many events being cancelled or postponed. Cue sports events were played in January and February, before tournaments were discontinued for all disciplines due to the pandemic, returning in June without an audience.

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 ...

won the only professional world championship held during the year, 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 ...

. The other Triple Crown events, 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 ...

and Masters, were won by

Neil Robertson Neil Alexander Robertson (born 11 February 1982) is an Australian professional snooker player, who is a former List of World Snooker Championship winners, world champion and former List of world number one snooker players, world number one. He ...

and

Stuart Bingham Stuart Bingham (born 21 May 1976) is an English professional snooker player who is a former World Champion and Masters winner. Bingham won the 1996 World Amateur Championship but enjoyed little sustained success in the early part of his pro ...

, respectively. The only major pool tournament held during the year was 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 ...

, won by the European team.

Pool

The cue sport

encompasses 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 ...

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 ...

. Events such as 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 ...

World Pool Masters The World Pool Masters is an annual international nine-ball tournament. Formerly, it was called the European Pool Masters (until 1995) until players from other parts of the globe were invited. History Throughout much of its history, the tournament ...

, and 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 ...

, were all postponed to the following year due to the

. The

, contested between select teams from the US and Europe was played in December.

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

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 ...

. There was just one event, the Treviso Open, with tournaments for both men and women. For the list now, (m) refers to the men's event and (f) to the women's tournament.

Billiards

World Billiards events

Two

World Billiards World Billiards (Limited) was founded in November 2011 as a subsidiary of the World Professional Billiards & Snooker Association (WPBSA). It includes former members of EBOS (English-Billiards Open Series) and WPBSA, and is the governing body for ...

events were played in 2020, the remaining devices were postponed or cancelled.

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 ...

traditionally played over several events had a single tournament in 2020.

Snooker

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, ...

generally begins in July and ends in May, however due to the

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. In January 2020, the disease spread worldwide, resulting in the COVID-19 pandemic. The symptoms of COVID‑19 can vary but often include fever ...

pandemic, the

2019–20 snooker season The 2019–20 snooker season was a series of professional snooker tournaments played between 9 May 2019 and 22 August 2020. In total, 47 events were held during the season: however, the ending of the season was highly disrupted by the ...

ended in August, whereas the

2020–21 snooker season The 2020–21 snooker season was a professional snooker season with tournaments played from 13 September 2020 to 9 May 2021. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the season was played almost entirely without a live audience with only the 2021 W ...

began in September.

won his sixth

, defeating

Kyren Wilson Kyren James Wilson (; born 23 December 1991) is an English professional snooker player from Kettering. He has won 10 ranking titles. Wilson made his professional tour debut in the 2010–11 snooker season, 2010–11 season after finishing fif ...

in the final.

Snooker world rankings

Non-ranking events

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. The final four events of the

2019–20 Challenge Tour The 2019–20 Challenge Tour was a series of snooker tournaments that took place during the 2019–20 snooker season. The Challenge Tour (snooker), Challenge Tour was the second-tier tour for players not on the main World Snooker Tour. The top p ...

were played during 2020.

World Seniors Tour

The World Seniors Tour is an amateur series open to players aged 40 and over. There was a single event in the 2020 World Seniors Tour.

Women's events

The women's tour is an amateur tour, with one event held in Belgium during 2020.

Amateur events

The

English Amateur Championship The English Amateur Championship is an annual snooker competition, the highest-ranking and most prestigious amateur event in England. It is also the oldest and longest-running snooker tournament in the world, having been established in 1916, th ...

was played in 2020, the hundredth staging of the event.

References

External links

World Pool Association Official Website

World Billiards Official Website

World Snooker Official Website
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200606140008/https://www.worldsnooker.com/ , date=June 6, 2020 Cue sports by year 2020 sport-related lists