English billiards’ best in town

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This article was published 27/05/2019 (2351 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

This likely isn’t the billiards you play in your basement.

Nor is it likely to be the type of billiards you’ll see people playing at your local dive bar. Or any bar in North or South America, for that matter.

This is English billiards, and players from all over the world are in Winnipeg this week battling it out for more than $20,000 in prize money.

The tournament, which began on Monday and runs through Friday, is called the Pan Am Cup and is held at the Anavets Assiniboia Unit #283 at 3584 Portage Ave.

It is the only world-rankings-sanctioned English billiards event in the Americas, as the game is primarily played in England and Asia.

So what the heck is English billiards? Well for starters, you need to know that billiards is a word used to describe a wide variety of cue sports, while English billiards is a game in itself.

It’s a game that’s played on a six-by-12-foot billiards table (traditional pool table size is four by eight feet) with only three balls: white, yellow and red. The red is the common object ball, while the two players are given either the yellow or the white as their cue ball.

To score points, a player can strike their cue ball so that it hits both their opponent’s cue ball and the red ball on the same shot (two points), hit the red ball into a pocket (three points) or the other cue ball into a pocket (two points), or strike their own cue ball into a pocket by hitting it off the red ball (three points) or the other cue ball (two points).

Players can combine the scoring options and score up to 10 points on a single shot. A player shoots until they don’t score any points on a turn and then their opponent takes over. First player to hit a certain score (Pan Am Cup matches range from 400 to 1,500 points, depending on the round) wins. Games can also be given a set time limit and the player with the most points at the end wins.

Why is this tournament happening in Winnipeg, of all places?

It’s because there’s been a devoted group of English billiards players in the city since 1921 — the year the Winnipeg Veterans English Billiards League was established. Kevin Augusta, the Pan Am Cup’s co-chairman, a member of the WVEBL and one of the 30 players in the event, said the game was introduced to the city by returning soldiers who picked it up during the First World War.

“As far as we know, (the league) started in an officers’ mess,” said Augusta, who’s unsure why the game hasn’t taken off in other North American cities.

“That tells us that a bunch of soldiers went over to the U.K. for the First World War, which ended in 1919. They came back home and took a couple years to recruit players and then they started a league.”

However, it wasn’t until 2013 when the WVEBL, a weekly league featuring 70 to 75 local players, started the Pan Am Cup. The tournament brings in players and officials from places as far as New Zealand and India for the event. Augusta said it’s a great way for the WVEBL players to learn from the best in the game.

“It’s just enjoyable for us to attract the world’s best to Winnipeg and get to watch them. To be able to play and be right next to players like that when they’re playing, it’s a bucket-list thing for a pool player,” Augusta said.

This year’s tournament features the top three players in the world — Singapore’s Peter Gilchrist and England’s Mike Russell and Robert Hall. Gilchrist has won several tournaments around the world in the past year and is known for scoring more than 1,000 points in a single turn at the table twice in his career in competitive matches. To put that into perspective, the most points scored by a player in a single turn in the WVEBL’s weekly league is 143, and that happened in 1998.

No. 2-ranked Russell is an 18-time world champion and Hall, No. 3-ranked, is a five-time U.K. champion. Russell and Hall have made the trip to Winnipeg for all four Pan Am Cups.

“It’s a really enjoyable event,” said Hall, who’s been playing in international events for 15 years.

“The hospitality of the local guys is great. The accommodations are always fabulous. For the top players, that’s really important. Sometimes, we travel to places with poor tables and poor conditions and it’s so destroying, to be honest. But here, it’s always top quality. That’s why I keep coming back.”

Augusta and fellow tournament co-chairman Garry Marshall hope the Pan Am Cup will be a stepping stone to hosting an even bigger international event one day.

“We want to grow our world presence because we’re looking at a bid for the 2021 World Billiards Championship, which would coincide with the 100th anniversary of our league, so that could be a huge event for our city and Canada,” Marshall said.

“It’s being held in Australia this year, which is the first time it’s being held outside of the U.K., so this would be the second. We’ve already got support from Tourism Manitoba if it is as big as we believe it would be.”

The Pan Am Cup’s round-robin play continues today, with the playoffs beginning on Wednesday.

The final goes down on Friday at 11 a.m. The event is open and free for spectators to come and watch. For more information and the tournament schedule, visit wvebl.com.

taylor.allen@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @TaylorAllen31