Cue Sports Weekly: Marco Fu Outlasts a Maximum, the US Open Hits Half a Million, and Auckland's Own Major Kicks Off This Weekend

t's a good week to be near a table. There's a snooker story out of Leicester that's basically a parable about experience versus fireworks, the US Open just quietly became the richest event in pool history, and — this one's for the locals — a genuine WPBSA-sanctioned major is being decided a few kilometres down the road in Papatoetoe as you read this.

Let's get into it.

Marco Fu Beats a 147 Without Making One

Here's a result that tells you more about snooker than most 3-0 blowouts ever could.

Si Jiahui, 23 years old and one of the most explosive break-builders in the sport, made the second maximum 147 of his career on Tuesday during Championship League Snooker in Leicester — the 243rd officially recognised 147 in the history of professional snooker. He looked, for one frame, unstoppable.

He still finished second in his group.

Marco Fu — 48 years old, three-time ranking event winner, playing in only his third Championship League ranking edition since the format launched in 2020 — ground out wins over Xu Yichen and Sean Maddocks, then needed just a share of the points against Si in the last match to top the group. He got exactly that: two breaks of 80 either side of dropping the opening frame, enough to finish 2-2 and take top spot on frame difference. Si's maximum earned him a standing ovation and a group runner-up finish. That's snooker for you — the highlight reel and the scoreboard don't always agree.

The bigger picture: Stage One of the 2026 Championship League wrapped up on 9 July after 32 groups of round-robin play, and Stage Two starts today, with Groups A and B being decided at the Mattioli Arena. Chris Wakelin, Ian Burns, Iulian Boiko, Dylan Emery and Marco Fu are all through, and the tournament's final — worth £33,000 to the winner plus a Champion of Champions spot — lands on 15 July.

If you want the detail on how the format works, the official Championship League site breaks down the three-stage structure, and the WPBSA's coverage of Si's maximum is worth a read for the full group table.

The US Open Just Became a $500,000 Tournament

Pool's biggest American event has always carried weight just from its history. Now it's carrying real money to match.

The 2026 US Open Pool Championship — the 49th edition — moves to a new home at Embassy Suites in Frisco, Texas from 25-30 August, and this year's prize fund has been confirmed at $500,000, a record for the event. That's a serious jump, and combined with the ESPN+ deal we covered last week, it's hard to argue pool isn't having a genuine moment in the US market right now.

Before that, though, the tour's grinding through its European swing. The Mezz Bucharest Open wrapped up on 5 July at the IDM Club, and the 2AM Prague Open is running right now, 8-11 July, with $35,000 on the line. From there it's a short breather before the Vice City Classic in Florida at the end of the month, then the run into Frisco. You can track the full 2026 WNT schedule here if you want to plan your streaming around it.

Heyball's Two Biggest Markets Both Had Big Weeks

Heyball had news on two fronts this week, and together they say something about how fast this format is spreading.

In China, the JOY Heyball Masters Zhengzhou Station is underway now through 17 July at the Central China International Convention and Exhibition Center, with 160 slots for players from around the world — the second stop of the season on what's becoming a genuinely global Heyball calendar.

Meanwhile in Hyderabad, the second Heyball National Championships wrapped up this week, with Natasha Chethan completing a junior-senior double in the women's event and Laxman Rawat taking his first senior national cue sports title with a 10-6 win over Divya Sharma. It's a smaller story than Zhengzhou on paper, but national federations running their own Heyball championships is exactly the kind of grassroots infrastructure the WPA needs if the Olympic push toward Brisbane 2032 is going to mean anything.

Drill of the Week: The Ten Blues

Discipline: Snooker Origin: A staple break-building routine used across professional snooker academies, including the Cuestars system Difficulty: Intermediate What it trains: Straight cueing, cue ball control from repeated position, and pressure under a running streak

Setup

Spot the blue. Position the cue ball behind it in a dead straight line so you've got a clean, unobstructed pot into one of the middle pockets. That's the whole setup — deliberately simple, because the value here is in the repetition, not the complexity.

The Task

Pot the blue into the middle pocket. Then, playing the cue ball from wherever it comes to rest, pot the re-spotted blue again. And again. The goal is ten in a row without missing. Sounds easy the first time. It stops feeling easy around pot number six, once your position starts drifting and you're no longer playing the same clean straight shot you started with.

Why It Works

This is really a stress test for your fundamentals. A straight pot from a fixed position is one thing — a straight pot from wherever your last shot happened to leave you is another, because now you're relying on genuine cue ball control rather than muscle memory of one specific shot. The pressure compounds too. Missing on ball nine after grinding through eight clean pots hits differently to missing on ball two, and that's deliberate. It's training the same nerve control you need sitting on a match-winning break.

Run this for fifteen to twenty minutes before a session. If you're regularly clearing all ten, tighten the pocket target or extend the distance.

The Local Angle

This one doesn't need much dressing up: the second event of the 2026/27 Q Tour Asia-Pacific season, officially the New Zealand Open Snooker Championship, is running right now at the Papatoetoe Cosmopolitan Club, 10-12 July, with 45 players in the draw. Defending champion Cody Turner, who beat Mark Canovan in last year's final, is back to defend the title.

If you're anywhere near Auckland this weekend, this is about as good as local cue sports gets — a genuine WPBSA Q Tour event, with a two-year World Snooker Tour card ultimately on the line for whoever wins the season's Global Playoff spot. Worth checking our rules reference if you're heading down and want a refresher on scoring before you watch.

Looking Ahead

Snooker's Championship League moves into Stage Two proper this week, with Groups C and D on 11 July, E and F on 13 July, G and H on 14 July, and the whole thing crowning a champion on 15 July. Keep an eye on whether Marco Fu's form holds up against younger legs, or whether this was one great group stage from a player enjoying a rare outing.

On the pool side, the 2AM Prague Open runs through 11 July before the tour gets a short break ahead of the Vice City Classic in Florida from 29 July. Then it's the run toward August's stacked US calendar — the Florida Open, the Arizona Open, and finally that record $500,000 US Open in Frisco.

And if you're in Auckland, get down to Papatoetoe before Sunday. Live Q Tour snooker with a genuine tour card on the line isn't something that happens on your doorstep very often.