Featured on 3-Cushion Billiards

At the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo (the 2021 Olympics, in reality), several new sports were added to the line-up for the Games. It’s always the case with each new Olympic Games that some sports will be removed from the roster, with new additions added to take their place. The process is complicated, involving input from the host city, lobbying from different sports bodies and the whims of the big-wigs on the IOC. Among those to be added to the Tokyo Olympics was skateboarding. And the question begs: if skateboarding can be an Olympic sport, why not 3-cushion billiards?

If you talk to the majority of professional billiards players about earnings, they will promptly inform you that it’s tough to earn a living. Generally speaking, prize money has risen significantly in recent years, thanks in part to the rise of the PBA, but it is still something of a slog when you are not at the very top of the sport. Dick Jaspers might make a comfortable living from 3-cushion billiards, but many others do not.

According to financial experts, there are only two ways a person can get rich quickly. One of these ways is through inheritance and the other one happens when you win a huge bet. While we cannot all have the luxury of rich parents, everybody can place a bet and get lucky.

The UMB Men's 3-cushion World Championship - the major event held at year-end - has had both conflict and drama over the years. And what better way to relive some of those great moments than with a stroll down memory lane guided by Bert Van Manen, one of the game's greatest writers.. Enjoy Bert's story of 2001 - 2018 which first appeared in Kozoom, as you prepare to watch the next chapter unfold in the world championship.saga.

The Verhoeven Open Tournament, formerly the Sang Lee International Open, is the premier three cushion billiard tournament held in the United States. The event takes place each summer at Carom Cafe Billiards in Flushing, New York and attracts the very top of 3-cushion billiard talent from around the world. Originally conceived in 2005 to posthumously honor twelve-time USBA National Champion Sang Chun Lee the tournament was renamed the Verhoeven Open when the table manufacturer agreed to begin sponsoring the event in 2012. The 2019 event, consisting now of TWO International tournaments, will be held August 2-4 (Women) and August 5-11 (Open).

Cross-Over Billiard Players Through the Years

If you are a carom billiards player, you cherish a five-minute scene in the middle of the 1961 movie, The Hustler. Fast Eddie Felson’s manager, Bert Gordon, has set up a high stakes game at a Louisville mansion owned by Findley. Anxious to start the match, Fast Eddie removes the table cover and is confused by the absence of pockets. “Thought we came here to play pool?” Felson says. "I don’t play pool, Mr. Felson,” Findley says. He sips from his drink, a cigarette wedged between his middle and ring fingers. “I play billiards. My house, my game. You don’t have to play if you don’t want to.”

Every room has this guy, the player who habitually scores the inadvertent shot. Usually a banger, sometimes a beginner, this guy specializes in the kiss, the double kiss, the long back up, the wrong rail that somehow turns out right. He plays a shot one way that misses and scores coming back. He plays a two-way shot that misses both ways and someway scores a third way. At West End Arcade and Billiards in Elizabeth, New Jersey, a room that is now closed, that guy was Mike D’Martino. And after years of torment, the 3-C players named a lucky shot after him, a “Mikey D.,” they would say. As in, “We were hill-hill, and then he made a Mikey D.”