Vietnamese Three-Cushion Billiards Erupts in Cần Thơ: How a Race-to-30 Format Swallowed the Stars

On October 8, 2026, at the Cần Thơ arena, Trần Quyết Chiến led Trương Bé Năm 19-13. A player in the strongest tier of Vietnam's three-cushion billiards was holding a six-point lead in a race to 30. To anyone who follows carom, that was all but a settled match. Yet when the final applause faded, the scoreboard read 30-28 for Trương Bé Năm. There was no roar, only the heavy silence of those who had just witnessed a fall. The same day, Trần Thanh Lực led Võ Minh Duy 37-29 and then lost 40-37. Chiêm Hồng Thái collapsed 16-40 to Nguyễn Ngọc Trị. Bao Phương Vinh lost to Thới Hoàng Huân by a single point, 39-40. Four names regarded as the genuine stars of the nation's billiards left the tournament within a single day. The media called it a day of shockwaves, an earthquake. As for me, reading the scorelines again, I saw a different story. To understand what truly happened, it must be placed in the right frame. The 2026 National Billiards & Snooker Club Championship ran from October 1 to 10 in Cần Thơ, the first time this Mekong Delta city hosted it. This is a carom event, specifically three-cushion, the discipline Vietnam is strongest at and where it is most popular, not snooker. The name Billiards & Snooker only reflects the structure of a federation that gathers both disciplines under one roof. The tournament brought together 451 athletes from 13 provinces and cities, with a total prize pool of about 300 million VND. The format was single elimination. Qualifying matches were races to 30 points, knockout matches races to 40 points. Some players had to play as many as four matches in a single day. The final day, October 9, followed a dense schedule: quarterfinals at 8:30, semifinals at 11:45, and the final at 13:45. These numbers decide everything that followed, and I will return to them. The tournament also serves another important function: it is a national ranking points event, used to classify and grade athletes. In other words, results here are not only about honor; they also affect each player's position within the national competition system. That is why one bad day carries so much weight. To outsiders, this was a day of shockwaves. To me, it is a lesson in how a tournament format can rewrite results when the rules are not read carefully. I have followed three-cushion billiards for many years, and my first principle is simple: never read a carom result while ignoring the format. In three-cushion, the true unit of strength is not the final score, but the série, the run of consecutive points in one inning, and the average, the points scored per inning. A player can win thanks to a 10-point run, and that does not mean he played better than his opponent throughout the match. Trương Bé Năm produced runs of 10 and 5 points in the match against Trần Quyết Chiến. In a national event, a 10-point run in a single inning signals a player whose level is far higher than his seeding suggests. This is the classic profile of an underrated mid-tier player. He did not win because Trần Quyết Chiến played badly, but because he created an explosive moment at the right time, and kept his composure at the decisive moment to close out the 30-28. This is where I want everyone to pause for a moment. In a race to 30, if you let your opponent produce a 10-point run, you have lost a third of the points you need in a single inning. The math of a short race leaves you little room to correct mistakes. A big run is not just points; it is a psychological shock that changes the rhythm of the whole match. For Trần Thanh Lực, the script was even more painful. He led 37-29 in a race to 40. He was just three points from victory. Yet he lost 40-37. In a race to 40, leading by eight points when the opponent still needs 11 sounds safe. But if the opponent produces a run, that gap evaporates within a few innings. Once again, the short format turned a seemingly settled match into a gamble. Alongside the top names, a wave of veterans also exited the same day: Nguyễn Duy Trung, Phạm Quốc Thuận, Nguyễn Như Lê, Đinh Quang Hải. This is a familiar pattern in tournaments with dense schedules. Older players tend to lose their edge when forced to play many matches in a short time, because stamina and recovery are no longer what they were at their peak. This coincidence reinforces the hypothesis of a physical factor on the day. Chiêm Hồng Thái lost 16-40. That was not a fall from a lead, but a comprehensive defeat, unable to compete. Bao Phương Vinh lost 39-40, by exactly one point in a race to 40. To me, this is the noisiest result of the day. One point in a 40-point race falls entirely within normal variance. It should not be read as a form signal. Sometimes a point is just a point. What stands out is that three of the four eliminated names, namely Trần Quyết Chiến, Trần Thanh Lực and Bao Phương Vinh, all lost in extremely tight matches, and two of them lost from a lead. This clustering is not random. It suggests an environmental factor enveloping the entire day, perhaps fatigue, perhaps table conditions, perhaps the format, rather than the isolated collapse of individuals. And this is where I must mention the schedule. Four matches in one day. In a discipline demanding intense concentration and millimetre-level precision like three-cushion, playing four matches in a single day is a genuine physical variable. It erodes the ability to stay focused at the decisive moments, exactly the moments when Trần Quyết Chiến and Trần Thanh Lực lost their leads. When you are tired, your hand can still strike the ball correctly, but your head begins to miscalculate in the key innings. In three-cushion, momentum is highly autocorrelated. A successful run breeds confidence, and that confidence feeds the next run. The Vietnamese have a fine word for this phenomenon: lên đồng, playing out of one's mind. It is not merely media color. It is a real tactical signal. When a player is on fire, he begins to read the table faster, choose bolder lines, and difficult shots suddenly become easy. In the opposite direction, the player in front starts playing safe, shrinking back, and that very caution becomes the trap. I once spent weeks reviewing the matches of a young player. That experience taught me something I bring to every analysis: never judge a player on a single day. I found the gems not because I have a keen eye, but because I am too reluctant to trust the ready-made reports. A single match day is only a thin layer of sediment. To understand a player, you must dig through many seasons. So I must say plainly what many will not want to hear: the story of the stars being swept clean is being misread. This is not evidence of a power shift in Vietnamese billiards. It is evidence of the degree of variance that the format creates. Doubt is not meant to deny, but to dig deeper before announcing a discovery. I do not deny that Trương Bé Năm, Nguyễn Ngọc Trị, Thới Hoàng Huân and Võ Minh Duy played well. They deserved their wins. But to turn one day into a trend, you need more than that. You need data across many tournaments, many seasons, many different conditions. There is one telling data point: the tournament gathered 451 athletes from 13 provinces and cities. This is a strong sign of the depth of Vietnamese billiards. When the middle tier of a discipline thickens, top players being eliminated becomes more frequent, but that does not mean the top players have grown weaker. It only means the gap between the elite tier and the middle tier is narrowing. That is good news for the discipline, not bad news. The problem is that a tournament with a total prize pool of about 300 million VND, divided among 451 athletes, cannot be an event that sustains players' livelihoods. This is an event of honor, ranking and grading. That means the pressure here differs from the pressure at an international event. And it also means we should not read its results as an absolute ranking of strength. What I took away from the day in Cần Thơ is not a list of eliminated names. It is a question about design. If a race-to-30 format plus four matches a day can make three of four top players lose tight matches, is that the best format for finding the most deserving champion? Three-cushion is a discipline of patience. It rewards those who know how to wait, how to read the table, how to build position over many innings. A short, frantic format rewards the explosive moment. Both have value, but they find different champions. If organizers want to keep the drama of upsets, they can leave things as they are. But if they want to find the best player more reliably, it may be time to consider longer matches, or to spread matches more evenly across days. I do not paint the future; I only measure the dust of time settling on each statistic. And there is one condition that would make me change my verdict: if names like Trương Bé Năm or Nguyễn Ngọc Trị repeat this achievement at the next tournament, in a longer format, then it would no longer be variance. It would be a trend. Until then, I keep my doubt intact.