Vietnamese Billiards: The Sediment Layer Beneath the Carom Lamp

Opening

11:40 p.m., a billiard hall on Lach Tray Street, Hai Phong. Three carom tables are still lit. The player at table two sets his cue down, bends lower than the table surface by a hand's width, and for about seven seconds the whole room holds its breath. The red ball rolls through the first cushion, hits the second, then the third before kissing the yellow ball. The impact cracks dryly through the air. Nobody claps. Only a middle-aged man in the corner, a notebook in hand, writes a single line.

I sat there, four metres from the table, wondering how many Vietnamese know that it was this very moment of silence — not some flamboyant shot — that carried a Vietnamese cueist to a world title. People remember the finishing stroke. They do not remember the seven seconds before it. They remember the trophy lift, not the fifteen years spent grinding in billiard halls without air conditioning, where the cloth swells in the humid season and players must wipe the cushions dry before every turn at the table.

I started keeping records on Vietnamese billiards in 2026, around the same time I started keeping records on youth football. The two fields look far apart, but they share one thing: both have a thick sediment layer that the media only ever sees the surface of. And both are treated with the same kind of story — the miracle story.

Context: the umbrella word that hides everything

When a foreigner asks me "what is billiards in Vietnam", I usually need a few minutes to answer, and the answer always begins by dismantling the umbrella word. "Billiards" is an umbrella covering several disciplines: snooker, American 8-ball pool, 9-ball pool, Chinese 8-ball, carom, and Russian pyramid. Each discipline has different rules, different technique, and a different commercial ecosystem. Calling them all "billiards" is like calling football, basketball and volleyball by a single name and expecting the listener to understand.

In Vietnam that umbrella is especially tangled. In popular perception, "going for billiards" usually means playing pool — 8-ball or 9-ball — in a hall with music, air conditioning and a coach for hire. But the discipline in which Vietnam genuinely holds world standing is carom, specifically three-cushion carom. This is the key point I want on the table from the start: Vietnam's international billiards achievements come almost entirely from a discipline that most domestic spectators have never watched for a full match. Fans know the names of carom cueists, but they know them through news bulletins and moments, not through a regularly broadcast tournament system.

I have spent many evenings counting. Over roughly the past six years, the hours of live broadcast of international carom events featuring Vietnamese cueists have been far fewer than the hours of domestic youth football broadcast. That creates a paradox: the discipline that delivers the biggest titles has the smallest media reach. And when reach is small, people are forced to tell the story through miracles, because a miracle is the cheapest way to narrate a moment the audience lacks the context to understand.

The social context is more complicated still. Thousands of billiard halls have sprung up in every province, mostly serving pool and mostly serving the young. This is a vast informal economy that creates jobs and shapes consumer habits, yet it sits almost entirely apart from the professional carom pathway. A fifteen-year-old who walks into a neighbourhood hall will learn pool, not carom, because carom demands a dedicated table, dedicated balls, and a teacher who understands cushion play. That separation is one of the most important sediment layers I want to excavate in this piece.

Identifying the discipline: what carom is and why it differs

Three-cushion carom is played on a table with no pockets. The player uses a cue ball to strike two object balls, and to score, the cue ball must contact at least three cushions before touching the second object ball. There are no pockets to aim at, and no shot is "easy". Every point is a problem in geometry and physics: angle of incidence, angle of reflection, spin, force, cloth humidity, and patience. Matches often run to 40 or 50 points, and a strong run can last ten minutes with more than ten consecutive scoring strokes.

I call carom "the sport of seven seconds". In those seven seconds, the player calculates the path of a ball that will strike three cushions before reaching its target, while the opponent sits still and the crowd holds its breath. The difference from pool lies here: pool rewards speed of decision and finishing ability; carom rewards control and repeatability. A good pool player can win on inspiration. A good carom player must win on system, because inspiration is not enough to repeat a three-cushion shot across three consecutive days.

That is why, whenever someone tells me carom is "luck" or "feel", I open my notebook. Carom is a discipline in which individual technique can be measured, and what can be measured cannot be called a miracle. This matters because it determines how we read the achievements of Vietnamese cueists: if the achievement comes from measurable technique, it comes from a process, and a process can be built or broken.

Three-cushion also has a rarely mentioned feature: it has almost no "body-size gap". A player 1.60 metres tall and one 1.85 metres tall have the same chance, as long as both understand geometry and control force. This is why carom becomes an attractive path for athletes without physical advantages in contact sports. In Vietnam this carries deep social meaning: carom opens a door for those excluded by other sports, and that is part of why it thrives here.

Player data: the names holding up the whole discipline

I am not writing this piece to praise individuals. But one cannot discuss Vietnamese carom without the three names that shaped the 2026–2026 period.

Tran Quyet Chien, born in 2026 in Hanoi, has for years been regarded as Vietnam's number one. He has risen to the world number one position in the three-cushion carom rankings and has won multiple titles at World Cup stops organised by the UMB. What I always record about Quyet Chien is not the trophy count but the stability: he is the long-format type, rarely erring in decisive runs, able to hold the rhythm of a match when trailing.

Nguyen Duc Anh Chien is the second name in the trio. He made his mark at World Cup stops and Asian events, with a more aggressive style, accepting higher risk in exchange for long runs. His style is more attractive to watch, but also more volatile — and in carom, volatility is penalised in long multi-day events.

The third name, and the one that changed the media landscape, is Bao Phuong Vinh. In September 2026, in Ankara, Turkey, he won the three-cushion carom world championship organised by the UMB, defeating the Dutch legend Dick Jaspers in the final. It was the first time a Vietnamese cueist had taken the world championship in this discipline, and it turned Bao Phuong Vinh from a name inside the game into a name in the newspapers.

But this is where I want to linger, because it is the essence of the method I pursue. The sediment layer of a world championship is not in the title; it is in the cueists forgotten when the lights go out. Behind Bao Phuong Vinh is a generation of Vietnamese cueists who never appeared in the headlines, people who sustained the carom movement for more than twenty years, teaching, opening tables and keeping the discipline alive before anyone had won a world title.

I have cross-checked my personal data against the UMB's public rankings across many seasons. What I found was not a lone star but a small group of Vietnamese cueists regularly present in the top ranks of Asian events and regularly clearing qualifying at World Cups. That number is not large — I usually count fewer than ten capable of going deep internationally — but it is thick enough to form a foundation. And it is precisely that thin yet durable foundation that lifts one person to the top.

The tournament system: where titles are manufactured

To understand why Vietnam has a world champion, one must understand the tournament system such players must pass through.

At international level, three-cushion carom is governed by the UMB, the world governing body for carom billiards. The competitive system comprises World Cup stops held in many countries, the world championship, continental events run by the Asian and European federations, and a number of commercially driven invitationals. The World Cup is the backbone: it is where cueists accumulate ranking points and where they earn income.

Vietnam has an advantage rarely discussed: the country has hosted World Cup stops, with one held in Ho Chi Minh City. Hosting a World Cup stop is not merely a matter of prestige. It means Vietnamese cueists play on familiar tables, before a home crowd, without flying half the world, without adjusting to time zones, and without bearing travel costs — a factor the media almost never mentions yet which directly affects performance.

At national level, the system comprises the national championship and grassroots events run by the federation and clubs. This is the lowest tier, and also the least documented. I have sat at grassroots events many times to count attendance, and what I realised is this: the quality of a carom nation lies not in the number of champions but in the number of players at the third and fourth tiers. If that tier is thin, the champion is merely a lucky individual. If that tier is thick, the champion is an inevitable product.

Another important structural point is match format. International carom events are usually played to a set points threshold, often 40 points in qualifying and 50 in later rounds, depending on the event. This format rewards stability over explosion. A player can win a 15-point run, but if he loses seven short runs in a row, he still loses the match. This is why Vietnamese cueists, forged in a long-format competitive environment and without the benefit of glamorous training conditions, adapt well to the international format.

I record one observation from years of watching qualifying rounds: Vietnamese cueists often start slower than European opponents in the first two runs, but are more durable in the second half. This may be a trace of the training environment — where imperfect conditions force players to learn endurance and adjustment rather than relying on a perfect feel for the table.

The power map: where Vietnam stands

If I map world carom power, I divide it into four groups.

The leading group comprises the traditional European powers: Belgium, the Netherlands, Turkey, Spain and France. These are places with centuries of carom history, professional club systems, regular media coverage and incomes sufficient for cueists to live by the game. Dick Jaspers, the Dutch legend, is the emblem of this group: a cueist able to sustain a peak across decades because a system holds him up.

The chasing group comprises South Korea, Japan and Vietnam in Asia, plus Colombia and Peru in South America. South Korea has a very strong club and media system for carom; Japan has a tradition of high technique and discipline; Vietnam has emerged as a new force through a broad movement and a talented generation. This group is where competition is fiercest, because everyone has enough technique to win, but no one has enough system to win consistently.

The third group comprises nations with a movement but lacking international competitive infrastructure, often sending cueists abroad at their own expense. This is the group where one organisational error can wipe out an entire generation of talent.

The fourth group comprises emerging nations where carom is being built from scratch, mainly in Asia and Africa.

Vietnam sits in the chasing group, and that means our achievements depend more on individuals than on the system. This is the verdict I want to hold, because it determines how we invest for the future. A nation in the leading group can lose a star without collapsing. A nation in the chasing group can lose a star and fall a decade behind.

I also note a detail about talent flows. Several Vietnamese cueists have moved abroad to compete or coach, mainly in Asia and Europe. This flow cuts both ways: it helps cueists access better conditions and brings knowledge home, but it also drains the domestic movement in periods when successors are scarce. In a discipline with a thin base, every departure leaves a gap.

Rules, governance and grey zones

Three-cushion carom is a discipline with clear, highly internationalised rules. Playing rules are set by the UMB and applied by continental federations. In Vietnam, the discipline falls under the national sports federation and specialist bodies, with a system of events from club level to national level.

But there is a grey zone I always watch: the gap between the official system and the reality of the movement. Most billiard halls — where the discipline truly lives — sit outside the official competitive system. There, rules may differ, scoring may differ, and there is no international referee. This is not wrong, but it produces a consequence: a cueist raised in the movement can be very good yet have never played under international rules, and when he reaches the big stage he must relearn habits that seem small.

I once watched a young cueist win repeatedly at home, then fail at a regional event because he was unused to how referees called fouls and how opponents exploited time. This is a type of risk that does not appear in a results table yet lives inside the result. In carom, a technical error is visible; a process error is not.

Another issue is data transparency. International carom events publish results fairly fully, but detailed data on individual runs and technical metrics are not systematised for general spectators. This makes analysis difficult and pushes media toward emotional storytelling. I have had to build my own spreadsheets across many seasons, recording every match result, cross-checking between sources, and accepting that part of the data will forever lie beyond reach.

Doubt is not for denial; it is for digging deeper before announcing a discovery. I hold that principle when discussing rules and governance: I accuse nothing, I merely record the gaps that anyone seeking to develop the discipline must fill.

A cueist's professional ecosystem

This is the part I want to give the most space to, because it is the most neglected.

What does a professional Vietnamese carom cueist live on? The short answer is: very few sources. Income comes from prize money, personal sponsorship contracts, coaching, and occasionally brand representation for equipment makers. Prize money exists only at major events and only for those who go deep. Personal sponsorship is rare and usually arrives only after a major title. Coaching is the most stable source, but it turns the cueist into a part-timer rather than a full-time athlete.

I have recorded the income structure of several cueists at different levels and found a worrying pattern: the income of Vietnamese carom cueists concentrates at the top, and the top is very narrow. The number one can make a living. The number ten must coach. The number thirty must take another job. This is the classic structure of individual sports in developing countries, and it has a direct consequence: it forces cueists to choose between career and livelihood at precisely the most physically capable age.

On training teams, most Vietnamese cueists have no personal coach, no fitness specialist, no sports psychologist. They train alone, review their own matches, adjust their own technique. This produces very good self-taught cueists, but also hard-to-fill gaps: a cueist may have elite technique yet not know how to manage emotion in the decisive run.

On playing rhythm, a Vietnamese carom cueist's calendar is uneven. Some months are dense with events, others entirely empty. This unevenness makes maintaining form difficult and causes cueists to lose rhythm before major events. Compared with European cueists, who have a stable calendar year-round, Vietnamese cueists often must "switch on" form in a short window, which drains psychological energy.

On media pressure, there is a paradox: when they win, Vietnamese cueists are praised as national heroes; when they lose, they are almost entirely forgotten. This pressure differs from that of team sports, where responsibility is shared. In carom, every shot belongs to one person. There is no teammate to cushion it. And in those seven seconds of silence, one person carries everything.

I believe this is the point any development programme must account for: investing in carom cannot be merely investing in technique. It must be investing in the endurance of a person standing alone.

The industry chain: from the billiard hall to the sponsor

Carom does not exist in a vacuum. It sits within an industry chain, and that chain decides whether the discipline lives or dies.

Upstream is infrastructure: tables, balls, cues, cloth, and playing space. This is where Vietnam's movement is strongest. The number of billiard halls nationwide is very large, and many have carom tables. But carom table quality is uneven. A good carom table requires standard cloth, high flatness, and stable temperature and humidity. A poor carom table makes players learn the wrong rebounds, and such errors are very hard to correct later.

Midstream is people and events: cueists, coaches, referees, organisers. This is the weakest link. The number of Vietnamese carom referees qualified to international standard is very small, which limits the ability to stage major domestic events. The number of coaches able to teach carom properly is also very small, which limits the ability to train the next generation.

Downstream is media, sponsorship and the derivatives market. This is where Vietnam is weakest relative to its potential. Carom lacks a media product attractive enough for general audiences: no regular in-depth commentary programme, no open data system for fans to consult, no professionally produced short-form content. Without media, sponsorship does not come; without sponsorship, prize money is low; with low prize money, cueists must coach; when they must coach, they have no time to train; and the loop closes.

I have redrawn this loop on paper many times, and each time I reach the same conclusion: the bottleneck of Vietnamese carom is not talent; it is the stage that converts talent into product. The talent exists, and there is evidence it exists. What is missing is the machine that turns talent into content, content into audience, audience into sponsorship, and sponsorship into training conditions.

Another branch of the industry chain is equipment and brands. International equipment makers are present in Vietnam mainly through retail and through sponsoring a few top cueists. The derivatives market — cues, cases, accessories, competition apparel — is growing but fragmented. This is an untapped opportunity: a discipline with millions of recreational players yet without a corresponding product ecosystem.

The counterintuitive angle: miracle or structure

This is the section where I want to say plainly what I have held back throughout.

The popular story of Vietnamese billiards is a miracle story. A country without a long carom tradition, without much money, without perfect infrastructure, suddenly produces cueists who beat European legends. It sounds wonderful. But it errs in placing the focus on the moment rather than the process, and it blinds us to what is actually holding up the achievement.

Vietnamese billiards did not create a miracle. These cueists merely joined fragments of history, geography and people into a solid structural block. The history fragment is the folk tradition of playing billiards, surviving across generations without institutionalisation. The geography fragment is Vietnam's position in the Asian carom flow, near competition centres and with overseas Vietnamese communities bringing knowledge home. The people fragment is a small group of cueists, coaches and table owners who kept the flame alive for twenty years without anyone paying them.

The most counterintuitive thing is this: the success of Vietnamese carom did not come from being better; it came from being more patient in a discipline others overlooked. Europe has a better system, but a smaller and ageing playing population. Asia has a young and large population, but mostly focused on pool. Vietnam sits at the intersection: young enough, populous enough, poor enough to choose the less contested path, and patient enough to go the long way. That is a structural advantage, not a miracle.

But here I must say something hard to hear: a structural advantage does not automatically convert into sustainable achievement. If we keep telling the miracle story, we will keep treating the discipline as an inspirational phenomenon rather than an industry needing investment. And when the inspiration fades — as all inspiration fades — we will lose what we have.

I have seen this happen to other sports in Vietnam. A major title appears, the media explodes, a few young talents are noticed, then everything quietens, and ten years later people wonder why there is no successor generation. The answer is always the same: we invested in the moment, not in the system.

A cueist's twenties are like a young geological layer: beautiful on the surface, but prone to collapse if the foundation is not checked. I have seen young cueists shine at a regional event and vanish after two seasons, because no one checked their foundation: no coach, no competition plan, no income to continue.

The spreadsheet comes before the dream. I do not paint the future; I merely measure the dust of time settling on each metric. And that dust is thickening in places the media does not look: provinces without events, female cueists underinvested, young cueists without a guide.

Conclusion

I returned to the billiard hall on Lach Tray Street on another night. The middle-aged man was still in the corner, still holding his notebook. I asked what he was writing. He said he records every run of the children in the neighbourhood, so that if one of them ever competes, he will know where they came from.

That is the entire story of Vietnamese billiards, wrapped in a notebook no one reads. A nation does not become a carom power through one night of a world title. It becomes a carom power through thousands of people quietly keeping records in thousands of billiard halls, through thousands of nights like tonight.

What I want to leave behind is not a prediction about medals. It is a question I will keep tracking: when the current generation of cueists peaks and begins to decline, who will be the next to step into the seven seconds of silence? If the answer is written in a notebook in a provincial billiard hall, the discipline is still alive. If no one keeps a notebook anymore, then every title we are celebrating is only the last light before it goes out.