Cue Sports Weekly: Zhao Xintong Goes Out on a Respotted Black, Pankaj Advani's Heyball Comeback Ends Early, and Pune Is Underway

Frame's tied. Everything's gone except the black. This is the scenario every club player half-knows the rules to and half-argues about, and on Tuesday it played out for real, on the biggest stage, with a result that mattered.

Zhao Xintong went down 6-5 to Zhang Anda, the deciding frame settled on a respotted black after the match ran past midnight in China with every seat in the venue filled. Zhao had chances late — he described himself afterward as having "a lot of chances in the last two frames" — but it was Zhang who potted the respotted black to close it out. Zhao didn't hide from the result: "I made far too many mistakes today, and I probably didn't deserve to win."

Zhao's exit was far from the only shock. Judd Trump, Mark Williams, John Higgins, Ding Junhui, and Barry Hawkins were all out inside the first round too — a genuinely brutal night for the tour's biggest names. Both Wu Yize and Kyren Wilson survived their own 6-5 scares.

With that much of the traditional top end gone early, the draw's now wide open in a way it rarely is this early in a tournament — Neil Robertson, Wu Yize, and Ronnie O'Sullivan currently look to have the clearer paths through, but after a first round like this one, that's not saying much.

Pankaj Advani's Heyball Return Ends in the First Round at Pune

The 2026 WPA Heyball World Championships are officially underway at the Rajan Khinvasara National Academy in Pune, and the headline from day one wasn't really about who won — it was about who didn't.

Pankaj Advani, the 28-time world champion across billiards and snooker, was playing heyball for the first time in three years, brought in on a wildcard after a handful of pullouts. He went down 4-7 to Taipei's Yip King Ling. It's a reminder of just how genuinely difficult heyball's transition is even for players with that level of pedigree elsewhere in cue sports — precision potting alone doesn't carry you through a discipline built around a very different table and clock.

Elsewhere the host nation had plenty to celebrate. Amee Kamani, a bronze medallist at the previous edition in Brisbane, put in a lopsided 6-2 win over Australia's Lilly Meldrum, while Brijesh Damani — playing just his second heyball event — beat Morocco's Ayoub Bakhtaoui 7-3. Top seeds Jack Whelan and Kelly Fisher both came through their openers comfortably, exactly as the draw expected.

With the field made up of six of the world's top ten men and eight of the world's top ten women, this is genuinely the richest cue sports tournament in Indian history. If you want the real breakdown of what makes heyball a different sport entirely from the pool most club players know, our Heyball vs 8-Ball comparison tool covers the table, the pockets, and the clock properly. And if a foul dispute's ever derailed your own heyball session, our Heyball Foul & Ball-in-Hand Explainer is worth having open on your phone while you watch this week's coverage.

Drill of the Week: The Black Ball Pressure Pot

Discipline: Snooker

Difficulty: Beginner to intermediate

What it trains: Potting under simulated pressure, the exact situation Zhao Xintong found himself in this week

Setup

Just the black on its spot, cue ball placed anywhere in the D.

Just Pot the Black!

The Task

Pot it. Then re-spot the cue ball in the D and do it again — but say the score out loud before every attempt, as if you're playing the actual decider: "scores level, black to win the frame." Do this ten times.

Why It Works

The shot itself isn't hard. Potting a stationary black from the D is well within reach for most club players on a good day. What actually gets tested here is composure — deliberately framing every attempt as the shot that decides the frame changes how your body responds to it, even in an empty room with nobody watching. If your pot percentage drops noticeably once you start saying the score out loud compared to when you're potting it casually, that's not a technique problem. That's the exact pressure response that just cost a world-class professional a match on television.

Looking Ahead

China Open continues through the week with the draw wide open after that first-round carnage. In Pune, the tournament runs through to Sunday — we'll have proper coverage once the later rounds separate the contenders from the rest of a very stacked field.

If you're running your own event in the meantime, our Tools section has the essentials covered — the free draw maker for a random bracket in seconds, and both foul explainers for exactly the kind of rules argument that turned Tuesday night in China into a headline.