World 10-Ball Championship in Ho Chi Minh City: Read the Call-Shot Rule Before You Read the Prize Money

Phu Tho Arena, the evening of September 19. On table five, a player sets the cue ball on the cloth, calls “ten ball, corner pocket,” and sends the cue ball into the one first. The one drops into the middle pocket. Nobody applauds. It is simply a legal break in 10-ball.

A few metres away, the payout sheet goes back up on the wall: 80,000 USD for the men's champion, roughly two billion Vietnamese dong. The men's prize fund is 500,000 USD. Add the 90,000 USD women's 9-ball open and the 111,000 USD mixed-doubles open, and about 701,000 USD moves through this city over four days of play.

But what decides who holds the 80,000 USD is not on the payout sheet. It sits in the term call-shot.

A world championship staged two years running

The WPA Men's 10-Ball World Championship, run by the World Pool-Billiard Association, takes place from September 19 to 26 — the second consecutive year Ho Chi Minh City has hosted it. Co-organisers include the WPA, the Vietnam Billiards & Snooker Federation (VBSF), the Ho Chi Minh City Billiards & Snooker Federation (HBSF) and the municipal Department of Culture and Sports.

Nearly 200 players from 40 countries are in the field. Vietnam supplies five names: Duong Quoc Hoang — the national No. 1, nicknamed “Hoang Sao” — alongside Luong Duc Thien, Pham Phuong Nam, Nguyen Anh Tuan and Chu Viet Hoang.

Two side events run in parallel: the Poison Saigon Women's 9-Ball Open (September 21-25, 90,000 USD) and the Box Billiards mixed-doubles open (September 19-23, 111,000 USD).

The model is not new globally. For Vietnam it signals something else: repeat organisational capacity. Hosting once is an event. Hosting twice is infrastructure. And infrastructure cannot be built with a press release.

The call-shot rule and the price of a lucky ball

In 9-ball, a ball that drops by accident still counts. In 10-ball, under the call-shot rule, a player must nominate the ball and the pocket before shooting; a ball that falls without being called does not count, and the ten only becomes legal as the last ball on the table.

It sounds like a technical footnote. In practice it is the entire character of the event. The call-shot rule erases the luck variable that makes 9-ball the most volatile discipline in pool, turning 10-ball into an examination of cue-ball control, shot selection and safety play.

Based on my experience watching matches across many tournaments staged in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, the rule changes how players approach the table. They stop hitting and hoping. They plan three shots ahead, and they often choose a safety over an attacking attempt with a 60 percent success rate. In call-shot 10-ball, 60 percent is not a good bet.

That is also why I keep telling editors: stop calling this event billiards in general terms. The WPA governs American-style pool, entirely separate from snooker's WPBSA. Mixing the two governing bodies is a basic professional error, and it leads to wrong conclusions about rankings, eligibility and even scoring. In pool you win by racks. In snooker you win by points. There is no bridge between the two, and no disciplinary precedent in one discipline can be imported into the other.

In 2026, when tournaments were suspended and the transfer market shrank to roughly 30 percent of the previous year's volume, I advised a club on a force-majeure clause in the contract of a Brazilian import. The clause was written vaguely, and that vagueness was used to pressure the player into halving his salary. Since then, every piece I write sets aside a paragraph to translate contract language into human language. A tournament works the same way: playing rules, prize funds, host slots — those are the clauses that need translating.

Five slots, one clause nobody prints on the poster

Financially, 80,000 USD for the champion out of a 500,000 USD fund is about 16 percent. That is flatter than the concentration seen at the biggest snooker events. In other words, the Ho Chi Minh City men's event pays deep: reaching the later rounds already pays.

A hidden contract only becomes visible when you count numbers instead of listening to promises. Here, the number to count is five.

Nearly 200 players, five Vietnamese representatives. For a country that has never produced a world champion in this discipline, placing five cues in the main draw does not happen by miracle. It happens through host slots, domestic qualifiers and the relationship between federation and promoter. That clause is not printed on the poster, but it exists, and it explains why a young player can share a group with a veteran on home cloth.

I am not opposed to the mechanism. Host slots are the cheapest way for a billiards nation to buy international match experience for its next generation. But the mechanism should be named correctly, especially when it arrives wrapped in a media medal.

The contender label

Domestic coverage calls Duong Quoc Hoang a heavyweight contender for the championship. That is an opinion, and it has not been verified by public data.

What can be verified is his trajectory in this very event across three appearances: an early exit first, then the round of 32, then the round of 16 — and that round of 16 came on home soil. The trend is clear, but the sample is three data points.

The problem lies elsewhere. The reporting gives no world ranking for him, and names no international rival. A power map cannot be drawn from one side alone. The great pool centres sit in the United States, the Philippines, Chinese Taipei and parts of Europe. Vietnam is rising. Rising and dominating are different sentences, and the distance between them tends to get compressed inside a headline.

Home-crowd pressure is an unmeasurable variable. It can be momentum or it can be ballast. At 41, I have commentated enough finals to know that familiar applause makes a player's arm looser in the first rack and tighter in the deciding one.

The wording inside a contract is the only evidence of infidelity this sport has. In billiards, the equivalent is the payout table and the entry list. Both are public. Both say more than any pre-tournament quote.

One more detail rarely mentioned: both side events carry equipment-brand names — Poison and Box Billiards. That is a direct commercial transmission channel from cue, table and case manufacturers to amateur players. The naming shows sponsorship money does not stand outside the event; it sits inside the event's name. For a still-young billiards market like Vietnam, that is a more meaningful signal than any statement about continental stature.

Takeaway

The number to watch is not the title. It is the round in which he exits. If Duong Quoc Hoang reaches the round of 16 or goes further, the three-year trend is confirmed with fresh data. If he falls earlier, the contender label needs rereading — not because he got worse, but because an expectation was placed on him that never had a basis.

Empty arenas, money still flowing, and the force-majeure clause turned out to be an umbrella for the stubborn. This time in Ho Chi Minh City, the arena is not empty. The money is still flowing. Only the host clause remains unprinted.

I do not hunt news. I hunt the silence between two answers in a press conference. The silence at Phu Tho Arena is exactly as long as the gap between round of 16 at home and world title contender. Three numbers of mine once broke a deal that had just begun to take shape — this time the three numbers are five host slots, 16 percent of the prize fund, and the round of 16.