Inside Vietnam's billiards academy: 47 young players and the spreadsheet that never lies

Eleven at night, a 16-year-old boy stands in front of a carom table at Bao Nam Billiards Club (Hai Ba Trung District, Hanoi), cue in hand, eyes locked on three balls, white, red, and yellow, placed close together in the corner. Coach Nguyen Van Hung pats his shoulder: "Not yet. You hit ball three before ball one. One millimeter off and the whole system collapses." The boy sighs, wipes his sweat, resets the balls. This is not an ordinary training session. This is the advanced class for young cueists being evaluated for the 2026 national project team tryouts.

1,200 kilometers to the south, at the Dong Nai Billiards Training Center, an Excel spreadsheet is automatically updating statistics from 47 young cueists. I open that spreadsheet and see numbers that never lie: 12 months of training, 38 internal matches, 4,217 strokes recorded by sensors mounted on the tables. The person who built this spreadsheet is a former national carom champion, now working in youth development, who could no longer bear evaluating students by gut feeling.

To understand this story, one must look back at the ten-year journey of Vietnamese billiards. From Tran Quyet Chien's runner-up finish at the 3-cushion World Cup in 2026, to the consecutive victories of Nguyen Duc Anh Tuan at UMB (Union Mondiale de Billard) events during 2026-2026, Vietnamese billiards has quietly shifted from a "mass movement" sport to a structured system. Many call it a miracle. I do not believe in miracles. I believe in long-term data and in the coaches who never appear on camera.

Following Vietnamese billiards since 2026, I have realized something the press often overlooks: behind those international titles lies a youth training network across provinces, working quietly but methodically. The spreadsheet of 47 cueists I just mentioned was created in 2026, when the COVID-19 pandemic halted all tournaments. That was also when the Dong Nai academy decided to digitize its entire monitoring process. Four years later, that spreadsheet became the handbook helping the coaching staff know exactly which cueist has potential, which is lagging, and which needs to change playing style.

A young cueist named Pham Minh Quan, 17, from Bac Ninh, appeared in this spreadsheet at position 31, in the "need more observation" group. Six months later, he climbed to position 9, after improving his stable three-cushion ball-one contact rate from 38% to 61%. That was a systemic change, not an individual breakthrough. Quan told me over the phone: "I didn't know how much I had improved until Coach Hung showed me the chart. I no longer trust feelings. I trust the numbers."

Quan's story is not isolated. Among the 47 cueists being tracked, 6 have been called up to national youth team training camps during 2026-2026. The conversion rate from "observation" to "selection" is 12.8%, a modest figure but meaningful when compared to the 3-4% rate of many other sports in Vietnam. Not because the billiards system is better, but because they dare to look at the truth in the data.

It is not talent that creates medals, but the patience of a spreadsheet updated daily for four consecutive years.

Now let us go deeper into the system's core. Three-cushion carom requires three ball contacts in a single shot, the cue ball must touch ball one, ball two, and ball three before reaching the pocket. This discipline is nicknamed "chess on the billiard table" because every shot is a three-dimensional geometry problem. Based on my eight years of following matches, a national-level carom player needs an average of 8,000-10,000 practice hours to reach the international competitive threshold. Meanwhile, a pool player (9-ball, American 8-ball) needs only 3,000-5,000 hours. This gap explains why Vietnamese billiards invests heavily in carom, a discipline with a high technical barrier where talent cannot easily be replaced by money.

Looking deeper, the Vietnamese billiards youth training system has three pillars that are often ignored in the media. The first pillar is provincial academies, Hanoi, Hai Phong, Bac Ninh, Dong Nai, Ho Chi Minh City, where children are selected at ages 10-12 through grassroots tournaments. The second pillar is private clubs with internationally certified coaches, according to data from the Vietnam Billiards & Snooker Federation (VBSN), as of January 2026, the country has 23 coaches certified by UMB or EPBF (European Pocket Billiard Federation). The third pillar is family, an element rarely mentioned but which decides 70% of whether a young cueist will pursue the professional path.

One important observation I want to share: among the 47 young cueists being tracked, 31 had a father or mother who played billiards at the amateur level. Not professionally, just amateur. But this family familiarity creates a psychological foundation. The child is not considered "crazy" for deciding to spend six hours a day at the billiard table. This is a cultural factor that anyone wanting to build a youth billiards system in another country must take into account.

Now, let us talk about the reverse angle. Recent media have continuously reported on newly emerging "billiards prodigies," cueists aged 14-15 defeating older players at grassroots tournaments. I have reviewed 22 recorded matches from the national U17 championships during 2026-2026. My conclusion: most of those victories came from physical and reflex differences, not tactics. When facing opponents over 35, young cueists win through speed and endurance. When facing opponents of the same age, the win rate drops to 51%, almost random. The spreadsheet never lies: 47 young cueists are being tracked, and only 4 have stable indices across 3 consecutive tournaments, meaning under 10%.

I once interviewed a cueist who was called a "prodigy" in 2026, now 17 and having fallen out of the national youth top 15. He shared: "People praised me too early. I felt pressured to win every tournament, while I knew I was still learning. It took me one year to understand that beating a 35-year-old at a grassroots event does not mean I will win internationally." That is a bitter lesson no spreadsheet can teach. Only maturity can teach it.

Digging deeper, I discovered a blind spot in the current Vietnamese billiards training system: a lack of professional sports psychology infrastructure. Among the 23 internationally certified coaches, none holds a sports psychology certificate. Young cueists receive very methodical technical training, but when they enter major tournaments, many collapse under pressure. A small investigation I conducted with 12 young cueists at two academies showed: 9/12 showed signs of pre-match anxiety during important events, 4/12 had considered quitting during the 2026-2026 period. This is a structural problem that needs to be addressed at the federation level, not the club level.

However, there is a notable positive signal: since 2026, several major clubs have begun hiring part-time sports psychology experts. Bao Nam Billiards Club, where I opened this article, now has 2 sessions per week with an expert from the National Sports Academy. This is a small step that could change the landscape within 3-5 years. Every cueist transfer is a reverse archaeology excavation. We dig through the past to find a piece for the future, and that piece is not just technique, but psychological balance.

Another often-overlooked aspect: finances. A young cueist pursuing the professional path in Vietnam needs an average of 8-15 million VND per month for training expenses, including table rental, cue purchase, and coaching fees. This figure is not large compared to sports like football or tennis, but it remains a barrier for many rural families. This is why most successful young cueists come from major cities or families with above-average economic conditions. Young cueists from remote areas are exceptions, not the rule.

Now, to conclude this analysis, let us look ahead. Over the next 5 years, three factors will determine Vietnam's position on the global billiards map. The first is whether the Vietnam Billiards & Snooker Federation will continue investing in youth training or revert to a "star training" model focused on a few elite talents. The second is whether clubs will accept digitized evaluation processes or continue relying on coaches' gut feelings. The third is whether major sponsors will come to billiards or continue choosing football and other spectator-heavy sports.

I have reviewed 30 years of Vietnamese billiards history, from the 1990s when it was merely a pastime of factory workers, to the 2010s when carom began professionalizing, to the 2026-2026 period when the youth training system began taking structure. The story of 47 cueists in the Dong Nai spreadsheet is only a small part of a much larger picture.

Before concluding, I want to share a small story. During my visit to the Dong Nai academy, I met an 11-year-old cueist named Le Hoang Nam, from Dong Nai, practicing basic three-cushion ball-one contact shots. The boy was clumsy, missing 7 out of 10 attempts, but he did not give up. The youth group coach told me: "This one is too early to conclude, but he has one thing no spreadsheet can measure. He does not give up after missing." I wrote in my notebook: "The sedimentary layer of Vietnamese billiards does not lie in World Cup titles, but in those 11-year-old children who have never won a single official match yet still come to practice every day."

I do not write to glorify cueists. I write to preserve the cultural sedimentary layers they leave on the billiard table. Every missed shot is a footprint, every victory is a stratum, and every generation of cueists is a new layer of soil being formed.

The spreadsheet of 47 cueists will continue to be updated. The numbers will change. Some will become famous, some will leave the sport, some will become coaches in the future. The question I want to ask is not "who will be Vietnam's next world champion cueist," but "will the Vietnamese billiards training system be patient enough to wait for the answer over 10-15 years, or will it fall back into the cycle of hype and short-term training?" The answer will come from the numbers in the spreadsheet, not from articles like this.