Billiards in Vietnam: When One Word Cannot Name Seven Disciplines

In a billiards club on Nguyen Thi Minh Khai Street, District 1, Ho Chi Minh City, a red ball lay still in the corner of the table. It stayed still for four seconds. No one touched a cue. The player straightened up, stepped back half a pace, then bent down again. The lamp above the table cast a rectangular stripe of light, and inside that stripe, three balls — white, yellow, red — formed a position the naked eye could not read. Around the table, no spectator spoke. The only sounds were the ceiling fan and a motorbike outside. Then the cue came down, the cue ball ran three cushions, struck the second red ball, and a three-point run was completed in silence. The whole room exhaled. Those four seconds never appear on the scoreboard. They sit inside no statistic. But that is where the match is truly played. The match truly begins at the moment the ball stops rolling. I have sat through many evenings like that, in Nha Trang and in Saigon, until I realised something that grows more important the more I write: the word "billiards" that we use every day hides at least seven different disciplines. Seven disciplines, seven rule systems, seven technical vocabularies, seven scoring methods, and seven communities of players who barely speak the same language. When the media calls all of it "billiards", they are not simplifying. They are erasing a truth. In Vietnam, a billiards club can be a place where three groups of people sit at three different tables playing three different games, and none of them understands the rules of the table beside them. The three-cushion carom table sits in the back row, where two older players strike long cushion runs like painting. The eight-pocket pool table sits in the front row, where a group of students fight over the break. A small snooker table sits against the wall, usually empty, because few have the patience for a frame that can run forty minutes. Three worlds in one room, divided by noise and by light. That is why I want to write this piece. Not to recount a match. But to put a problem on the table that Vietnamese sports media rarely touches: are we talking about one sport, or about an umbrella covering seven different sports? The first discipline — and the one where Vietnam genuinely has a place on the world map — is three-cushion carom. This is the classic line of billiards, with no pockets, only three balls on an empty table and two cushions running around it. Points come when the cue ball strikes at least three cushions before hitting the third ball. The governing body is the World Billiard Union, known as UMB. Its circuit includes World Cups staged in various cities, and an annual world championship. Ho Chi Minh City has hosted a World Cup leg several times, and each time, leading players from Europe, South Korea and Turkey fly in. Vietnamese players are so strong at three-cushion carom that it has become part of the national identity. Tran Quyet Chien, a player who has sat among the leaders of the UMB ranking, is a name local fans mention with a pride that feels almost familial. But the point I want to stress is not the achievement. It is that every technique of three-cushion carom — reading cushions, applying spin, calculating the path systems — does not exist in pool. And vice versa. The second discipline is nine-ball pool, also called 9-ball. This is the most popular line in recreational clubs, and the one seen most often on international television through events run by the World Pool-Billiard Association and commercial systems such as the Mosconi Cup. The rules are simpler than carom: there are pockets, ten balls, and the winner is whoever legally pockets the 9-ball. But behind that simplicity lies a whole technical system of its own: the break shot, the jump shot, the push-out, and the art of safety — leaving an opponent a position they cannot play. The third discipline is eight-ball pool. Unlike 9-ball, eight-ball splits the table into two groups, solids and stripes, and the winner must clear their own group before pocketing the 8-ball. This rule seems like a mere variant, but it changes the strategy entirely: the player must manage an entire group of balls, plan several shots ahead, and choose the moment to break the cluster. A good 9-ball player is not necessarily a good 8-ball player. The fourth discipline, and the one rising fastest commercially, is Chinese billiards, also called heyball. This is a hybrid line: a table with eight pockets like pool, but with rules and ball sizes set to the Chinese standard, and most importantly, a tournament system tied to the Chinese market. A heyball player can earn prize money a Western pool player can only dream of. This is a point many Vietnamese fans do not know: there is a line of billiards whose centre of power is not in Europe or America, but in Asia. The fifth discipline is snooker. This is the British line, played on the largest table, with the most balls, and perhaps the one demanding the most patience. The snooker world championship is held each year at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England — a venue that is almost sacred to fans. Snooker's vocabulary is its own too: a hundred-point run is called a century, and the perfect one-hundred-and-forty-seven run is called a maximum. In Vietnam, snooker is a niche line, but it exists, and it has a loyal group of players. The sixth discipline is one-cushion and free carom, sibling lines of three-cushion, played on the same table but with lighter rules. And the seventh is Russian pyramid, a line almost absent from Vietnam but dominant in Russia and neighbouring countries, with heavy balls and entirely different rules. I list these seven lines not to overwhelm you. I list them to prove one thing: when a newspaper writes "Vietnam wins the Asian billiards championship", that sentence is almost meaningless unless it names the discipline. Winning three-cushion carom is completely different from winning nine-ball pool. Different opponents, different training, different prize money, and different fates for the athlete once the event ends. Based on my experience following matches at clubs in Nha Trang and Saigon, I have noticed a pattern: Vietnamese fans love three-cushion carom because it resembles a geometry problem, while younger fans love pool because it resembles a fast contest. These two groups rarely sit at the same table. And that is a loss. I learned to read matches through numbers, but only when those numbers know how to dance. A figure like "average per inning" in three-cushion carom means the points a player scores in each turn at the table. A world-class player can exceed two points per inning. But if you carry that figure into pool, it becomes meaningless, because pool is not scored by innings but by balls pocketed. The same word "efficiency" carries two completely different meanings. This is why I say that analysing billiards without identifying the discipline is a methodologically impossible task. You cannot compare a one-hundred-and-forty-seven break in snooker with a run in three-cushion carom. They belong to two different technical universes. They have two different ranking systems. They have two different fan communities. And above all, they have two different definitions of the word "good". I remember once when a young editor asked me: "You write about billiards, so which player do you like most?". I stayed silent for a moment, then asked back: "Which billiards?". He was stunned. He had never considered that his question was missing a clause. And I understood him. An entire media culture had taught us that billiards is one single thing. There are scoring runs that do not appear on the scoreboard, but in the breathing of the crowd. The moment a three-cushion carom player straightens up from the table after a ten-point run — that moment is recorded by no metric. But it is what brings people back to the club the next night. So if the word "billiards" hides seven disciplines, what is really happening in Vietnam's current billiards wave? I believe there are three parallel movements, and we often confuse them with one another. The first movement is the rise of three-cushion carom as an organised professional sport. Vietnam has players, events, audiences, and livestreams that draw tens of thousands of viewers. This is our firmest foundation on the international map. But it is also the line least noticed by mainstream media, because it is not loud, has no fiery break shots, and does not suit fifteen-second clips. The second movement is the boom of pool as a recreational game. Pool clubs spring up in every city, drawing young people and creating a new tier of players. But most of them play for fun, not to compete. The gap between a good pool player at a club and an international professional is huge, far bigger than outsiders imagine. The third movement is the arrival of Chinese billiards, heyball, as an economic opportunity. Some Vietnamese players have begun looking toward this line because of the prize money. This is a notable phenomenon, and it shows that "billiards" is not only a technical matter but a market one. These three movements happen at once, but they are not alike. And when the media merges them under one word, we lose the ability to understand what is truly happening. We praise "the growth of Vietnamese billiards" without knowing that carom is growing in quality, pool in quantity, and heyball in money. This is where I want to offer a counterintuitive angle. What I believe, and believe strongly after many years sitting in clubs, is this: the more popular the word "billiards" becomes, the more invisible each discipline becomes. The popularity of the common name benefits no specific discipline. It benefits only those who want to sell a common image, a common feeling, something easy to consume. Think about it. When you read a headline that a Vietnamese player has won an international billiards event, do you know whether it was carom, pool or snooker? If not, you cannot judge the scale of that achievement. Winning a regional pool event and winning a three-cushion carom World Cup leg are feats at completely different levels, yet in the papers they can look identical. The blind spot of collective memory lies here: we remember a name, we remember a moment, but we forget the discipline. We forget that behind each discipline lies a different training system, a different funding source, a different career opportunity. And when we forget that, we cannot demand the right things for each discipline. I do not write about scoring runs. I write about what they hide. And what a three-cushion carom run hides is thousands of hours of practice in a room with no audience, with a coach, and a notebook of figures about cushion paths. What a pool break hides is a youth traded between the club and the classroom. I think about this every time I see a young player sitting alone before a table, repeating one shot in silence. He does not know he is standing at the crossroads of one word and seven roads. He only knows the ball did not go where it should, and he must do it again. So what should we do with this awareness? First, when speaking of billiards, name the discipline. This is a small change with great power. It forces the writer to understand what they are writing, and it forces the reader to distinguish what they are reading. A paper that says "Asian three-cushion carom champion" is far more honest than one that says "Asian billiards champion". Second, when judging an achievement, place it within the right system. A title only means something when we know which system it belongs to, how many opponents it involved, and at what level those opponents stood. This is the basic principle of all sports analysis, yet we often ignore it for the convenience of a common name. Third, look at the economic current behind each discipline. Where money flows, the future lies. And today, money flows in two very different directions: toward the West in the traditional pool and snooker systems, and toward Asia in the Chinese billiards system. Vietnam sits at the meeting point of these two currents, and that is both an opportunity and a challenge. I have no final answer to how Vietnamese billiards should develop. No one does. But I know one thing for certain: we cannot grow something we do not name correctly. Seven disciplines need seven strategies. Seven disciplines need seven ways of seeing. And one word cannot contain seven fates. When I left the club that night, the red ball lay in the pocket. No one remembered how many cushions it had travelled. No one recorded the four seconds of silence. But the player remembers. And perhaps that is all a discipline needs to survive: one person who remembers its correct name. The conclusion I want to leave is not a summary, but a new way of seeing for the young writer about to sit down and tell the story of a billiards match. Before writing the first sentence, ask yourself: which discipline is this, which system, and which moment will remain after the score is forgotten. If you can answer those three questions, you are already ahead of most people writing about billiards today.