Camel Pro 8-Ball Championship

[Bob Jewett]

A very large factor in the WPA sanctioning process is that there is enough required added money that the players who have to travel have a good chance to break even. The later Dragon "WC"s had essentially no added money. The ones that were in NYC were not cheap to attend. Here are the added-money requirements for WPA sanctioned events:

Category 1 – World Championships, minimum 32 players and minimum added prize money is $100,000
Category 2 – Events with a minimum of 32 players and offering $75,000 or more in added prize money
Category 3 – Events with a minimum of 32 players and offering between $50,000 and $75,000 of added prize money
Category 4 – Events with a minimum of 32 players and offering between $25,000 and $50,000 of added prize money

 

[Raph Cleary]

Just like in any other sport, the best player/team won't always win, but look at who the ten most recent world nine-ball champions were: 2012 Appleton, 2013 Hohmann, 2014 Feijen, 2015 Ko Pin Yi, 2016 Ouschan, 2017 Biado, 2018 Filler, 2019 Gorst, not played in 2020 due to pandemic, 2021 Ouschan, 2022 Van Boening. These are some of the most legendary players in our sport's history, so it would seem that WPA World Championships are consistently bringing the cream to the top.

Do you think Ronnie Alcano & Chao Fong-pang should be inducted into the BCA hall of fame due to them being multiple WPA World Champions? Although they don't have many titles after that, is being a multiple time world champion enough or do you need multiple titles to back up the resume to be inducted, because both players are in there 50s and haven't been considered yet, I guess being American helps too!

 

[sjm]

Do you think Ronnie Alcano & Chao Fong-pang should be inducted into the BCA hall of fame due to them being multiple WPA World Champions? Although they don't have many titles after that, is being a multiple time world champion enough or do you need multiple titles to back up the resume to be inducted, because both players are in there 50s and haven't been considered yet, I guess being American helps too!

I probably wouldn't put either in due to an insufficient resume of major titles. Chao, for my money, was the stronger of those two.

On the other hand, there's a guy with a WPA sanctioned World 9-ball title and a WPA sanctioned world Straight Pool title who also has a very long resume of titles. His name is Niels Feijen and his absence in the BCA Hall of Fame is very hard for this fan to fathom. He's one of the very best players in our sport's history.

 

[Raph Cleary]

I probably wouldn't put either in due to an insufficient resume of major titles. Chao, for my money, was the stronger of those two.

On the other hand, there's a guy with a WPA sanctioned World 9-ball title and a WPA sanctioned world Straight Pool title who also has a very long resume of titles. His name is Niels Feijen and his absence in the BCA Hall of Fame is very hard for this fan to fathom. He's one of the very best players in our sport's history.

Thanks for the insight and yes Feijen will probably most definitely be inducted next year. We need to start calling it the European invasion!

 

[Swighey]

For example, a field in which only Europeans are invited cannot gain sanctioning as a world championship, no matter how strong that field is and, as we both know, it could be VERY strong.

Absolutely! Take football (soccer). As far as European teams are concerned, there are two majors - the World Cup and the European Championship (the "Euros"). The Euros is harder to win than the World Cup because, other than Brazil and Argentina and occasionally another temporarily strong team, the World Cup is diluted by teams that have little chance of going deep and pretty much no chance of winning. While it's a dream for any player to win either, any European player would rather win the World Cup once than the Euros 4 times in their career.