Let's rephrase then.... Do any of those players play with the rest of the world anywhere else but Qatar, China and Japan? Meaning that the rest of the world has to come to them, but they don't leave their part of the world...
Shane, Appleton, Niels, Thosten, Orcullo... Those top guys play everywhere. Therefore, they are the standard.
There may very well be "monsters" that we never hear about, but whose fault is that? Not the guys I mentioned. They should very well be considered the best on the world, because they play everyone and everywhere in the world.
they do. if you remember recently, some of these "top guys" went to bangkok before the w9b (after china open) for a couple of money games with some of the asians that were mentioned. mika went to manila to challenge ignacio in a race to 25. morris, hohmann, morra, souquet, ko brothers, etc, were all in the Philippines last month for the MP 9-ball and 10-ball cup. a week before that souquet, morris and a chinese champion (forgot the name) were all in a tournament sponsored by bugsy. these things i mentioned are not even WPA sanctioned events.
if you want further info on where the mentioned players compete in official competitions, just find their names in the WPA ranking list, http://www.wpa-pool.com/web/rankings
(EDIT) also, let's not forget the game that Chinese Taipei brought when they went to the US a couple of months ago - how the Ko brothers dominated. remember the incident when Souquet had to go and was replaced by SVB...
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