Currently, who are the top 5 cueists in the world?

Best players, best cueist...pool, snooker, carambolage, pyramid...
I think this is kind of a never ending discussion.

But as someone who is coming from a snooker background ( as an amateur/ hobby player of course) I`d like to say that snooker players are a bit overrated when it comes to best players in cuesports.

Without a doubt snooker players have a very solid and straight cueaction, and thats what makes them superior to pool players when it comes to open play. But eventhough many former snooker players made an impact in the pool scene, nearly all of them never mastered the jump- and breakshot on the same level as the top pool players do.
Well, you could turn that around and say no pool player will master long potting as the top snooker pros do...so I guess its back to the start of the endless discussion. (and we didn`t even talk about the other cuesports)

So maybe, instead of talking about best players or cueist, it might be better to discuss who is or was the best ...person or personality in cuesports.

And when it comes to that my number one spot goes to Steve Davis.
A highly talented, mentally strong and successfull player with a deep love for not only "his" snooker but all cuesports. Who is still promoting cuesports everywhere he goes.
 
buckets said:
This is a great point.

Snooker players rarely spin the ball, esp. compared to a carom player.
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you should watch that stephen lee vid posted here........
10 years ago i would have answered
1 stephen lee
2 stephen lee
3 stephen lee
4 stephen lee
5 stephen lee
 
PoolBum said:
The snooker players you mentioned who competed at pool did not all "dominate world pool." The fact that Peach won a world 9-ball title doesn't show that snooker players are better cueists than pool players, it only shows that it may be easier to be competitive at the top level of pool coming from a snooker background than the other way around, and/or that Peach may have been a better at pool than snooker. I think that is due mainly to the difference in the nature of the games, rather than in the nature of the players. Ronnie O'Sullivan, perhaps the greatest snooker player ever, competed on the IPT and couldn't win.

There's no reason why players who take up snooker due to cultural and social reasons would turn out to be better cueists than players who take up pool for cultural and social reasons. To put it another way, there's no reason to think that a great pool player could not have been a snooker champion had he grown up in England and played snooker his whole life rather than pool.
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You make some good points, particularly the cultural aspects of taking up either sport which I agree with.

In terms of Ronnie, he never quit snooker to fully pursue pool so he wasn't prepared to compete effectively on the IPT. Whereas if he had quit snooker and learnt the game properly like the players I mentioned (Peach etc) then things may have been different due to his cueing abilities. For this reason, when I played on the UK tour back in the day I would rather draw raw pro snooker players with minimal experience than an experienced pool player and had a few scalps from top 32 players. However, I found that if they stuck with pool over the long term they would be harder to beat than the pool players.

The players I mentioned have all dominated in their own ways at various stages. Drago for instance won the World Pool Masters and then a few weeks afterwards made the semi of the World Championships in 2003. I played in that WC qualifiers and spent a day practising next to him and Melling. Drago at that stage had only just starting playing 9ball but he made the transition fairly quickly possibly through practising a lot with Melling.

Gray was the number 1 in Europe for a while, Peach of course won a WC and a lot of other events and Melling has had some strong results. Lastly, Shaw wanted to be a snooker player and he has started to completely dominate the pool world. As such, as a collective these players have had a large impact on the pool world.

Anyway some of your points are very valid. The trouble is that everyone on the board is speaking subjectively as we will never really know who the best cueists are unless the top snooker players quit snooker and took up pool full time. Also, among other things no one can agree which game is the truest test of cueball control so we don't have anywhere to really start the argument from. Some of these carom posts are starting to make a lot of sense as well :-)

.
 
Last edited:
Excuse my French.
Because it's not French.
Like unto many other sports that involve the physical movement of a ball, billiards and pool share a common trait, which is the control of energy, which is manifest by the balls, and executed with a cue.
The extent of a player's accomplishment is only limited by (and can only be measured according to) the types of games they play, ie the rules that govern what can be shot and how.

Take this into consideration when judging the "masters" of pool and billiards.
 
Poindexter

ABR said:
Excuse my French.
Because it's not French.
Like unto many other sports that involve the physical movement of a ball, billiards and pool share a common trait, which is the control of energy, which is manifest by the balls, and executed with a cue.
The extent of a player's accomplishment is only limited by (and can only be measured according to) the types of games they play, ie the rules that govern what can be shot and how.

Take this into consideration when judging the "masters" of pool and billiards.
Click to expand...
Qu'est-ce que c'est?
 

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