Duane Puttock has done a tremendous job to pull together a 32 player field of the highest quality to do battle for an £800 first prize. Played to Blackball rules it has been interesting to see former IPA Tour number 1, Rob Chilton – noted as a World Rules player, put his name down for this one. It could perhaps be the start of something in England as the line between both rule sets is slowly (very slowly!) starting to fade, it is my belief that this, in part, has been caused by the rejuvenation of the IPA Tour.

Chilton, although being the most recognised player due to the IPA TV coverage is not the only notable player to be participating with many of the top English Blackball players in attendance. The list includes all of the England Men’s A team that won the 2012 European Championships (except for Andy Lucas who had to pull out due to other commitments) and the likes of 2011 National Champion Adam Brown and 2011 BAPTO Champion Shane Thompson.

The matches will all be of the highest quality (I have no doubt!) with it being very difficult to pick a winner, you can watch the action live and from the comfort of your own home for just £1.49 for the whole day – less than a pint of beer! Just visit Cuesport TV for the details. What more would you want to do with your Sunday?

The 8-ball pool tournament played to Blackball rules takes place on Sunday 20th May at the Crucible Sports and Social Club in Newbury, Berkshire.

The limited 32 player field has turned out to be an awesome array of the best that Blackball has to offer in England with reigning national champion John Chambers and 2011 National Champion Adam Brown both in attendance. These two are joined by BAPTO Champion, Shane Thompson, and England ‘A’ Internationals Ian Ali, Aidan Finch and European Championship runner-up Jack Whelan.

All of the action from this event, that carries an £800 first prize, will be shown live on Cuesport TV for the pay-per-view price of just £1.49. Matches start at around midday and will be best of 15 frames.

Buy the PPV here: Newbury Blackball Pool Open Live Streaming

Full List of Entries:

Aaron Watts
Jonjo Sharkey
Robbie Self
Ian Ali
Dom Yates
Adam Brown
Matthew Challen
Ben Mackie
Jamey street
Tim Williamson
Ben Tillin
Mark Priest
Luke Johnson
Dave Shaw
Dan Davy
Dave Graham
Shane Thompson
Kieran Hawkins
Ryan Houston
Paul Broome
Mark Alexander
Dave Hood
Kevin Vane
Gary Taylor
Mike Piper
Aidan Finch
Micky Turner
Richard Blackmore
Heath Messer
Bali Jans
John Chambers
Jack Whelan

Buy the PPV here: Newbury Blackball Pool Open Live Streaming

Watch Blackball Videos: Blackball Pool on Cuesport TV

So I thought I would post some sort of guide in the blog to give you a rough idea of when you can start to see things coming through, plus I thought I would also describe the process here at Cuesport TV.

‘The Process’

Pretty much everything that is shown on the TV table at a given live event will also be recorded ‘as live’ directly to our system’s hard drive. I say ‘pretty much’ simply because on occasions matches do not get recorded.

After this recording the video files are then imported into our editing suite and most of the time shortened to cut out all the re-racking and boring bits! This in itself can take a fair amount of time for each match, sometimes up to 2 hours.

From here the video file is then exported into a suitable digital format to give us a decent quality file for use on the web. It is this file that is then used to create other multiple file formats. The export process takes between 20 and 60 minutes dependent on the file size.

The files are then ready for upload to our system, this is the bit that takes a lot of time, a 1GB video file takes around 4 hours to upload as we are constrained by the connection speed we have here.

The records are then created on the website that the video’s slot into (or nothing would play) and the files are transcoded, this makes them available in a variety of formats for when we create an app or change video player.

That’s pretty much the whole process and you can see that one video file takes around 10 hours to complete (most of that done by a computer in fairness).

Release Dates

UPC-BUCS 8-Ball Championships 2012 -10 videos from this event have already been released in the 8-Ball Pool Video category. You will need to go to around page 16 to find the videos until the search feature is enabled.

The rest of the UPC content will be available by: Wednesday May 2nd

EBPF County Finals 2012 – I have brought in an extra editor to complete this series of matches to try and speed up the process a little bit and to clear a bit of the backlog.

Available by: Monday May 14th

European Blackball Championships 2012 - This is a popular series of videos as so many players got to play in front of the Cuesport TV camera’s, this series will be edited straight after the completion of the UPC-BUCS videos and will start to come through the system by mid-May.

Available by: Thursday May 31st

GB9 Paul Medati Trophy – Two matches have already been made available from this tournament but in un-edited form, these are the final and semi-final of the Pro Cup event. The rest of the matches from the Pro Cup and the main event will be edited and made available by mid-June.

Available by: Friday June 15th

Any other videos from other events will be after this date. I know we are still due to complete some GB9 content from last year plus we have another live event set for 20th May as well so please bear with us.

I hope this post gives you an indication of what and when you can expect certain things from Cuesport TV, and please do hold me accountable for the dates!

It will be a welcome change for us providing some live 9-ball and I am sure for some of our regular viewers it will also be something different to get your teeth into.

In probably the most poignant event in the GB 9 Ball Tour’s history players will compete in the Paul Medati Trophy, Pro Cup II and the newly named Mark Lovell Challenge Cup.

Sadly Mark, who many on the tour will of course know, lost his battle with cancer in December 2011 at the age of just 54. The tour opted to rename this Challenge Cup event in his honour and it will become a yearly fixture on the GB9 calendar.

Not only is there some fantastic pool on offer but the tour will be doing it’s yearly fund-raising activity for Macmillan Cancer Support.

It is World Number 3, Chris Melling, that will be the man everyone wants to beat as he looks to defend the main event title he won last year. Battling with Melling will be other top names including Daryl Peach, Karl Boyes, Craig Osborne and Imran Majid.

You can watch all of the action live on Cuesport TV from 10:15am on Saturday morning (14th April) and through to around 11pm on Sunday evening (15th April).

The event is PPV and if you buy in advance it will cost just £2.95 for the whole event, the full price is £3.95.

You can buy it from the following link now: GB9 Paul Medati Trophy 2012

11:00am – Scotland B1 v Scotland B2 – Seniors

1:15pm – England B2 v Ireland B1 – Men’s B

3:30pm – England v Wales – Men’s A

5:45pm – Scotland v England – Men’s Senior A

8:00pm – England v Wales – Ladies A

CLOSE 10:00pm

Wednesday 28th March

12:15pm – Northern Ireland v Scotland – Under 23 A Team

2:30pm – Scotland v Wales – Specials A Team

4:45pm – Under 18 A Individuals

6:15pm – Under 23 A Individuals

9:30pm – Men’s A Individuals

Thursday 29th March

9:30am – Catalonia v Gibraltar – Men’s A

11:45am – Northern Ireland v Scotland – Specials B

2:00pm – Northern Ireland v Wales – Seniors A

4:15pm – Wales B1 v Southern Ireland B1 – Men’s B

6:30pm – Southern Ireland B1 v Scotland B2 – Seniors B

8:45pm – Singles Matches

CLOSE – 10:00pm approx

Friday 30th March

9:30am – Wales v N. Ireland – Specials ‘A’

11:45am – Scotland v England – Under 23 ‘A’

2:00pm – Scotland v Catalonia – Men’s ‘A’

4:15pm – Isle of Man v England – Ladies ‘A’

6:30pm – Wales v Scotland – Under 23 ‘A’ (NO LIVE SCORING)

8:45PM – N. Ireland v Scotland – Men’s ‘A’

CLOSE – 10:00pm approx

Saturday 31st March

11:45am – David Rooney v Thompson/Dunster – Under 23 ‘A’ Final

1:45pm – Under 23 ‘A’ Team Semi Final – Scotland v England

4:00pm – Men’s ‘A’ Team Semi Final – Wales v Northern Ireland

6:30pm – Men’s Singles Final

8:30pm – Men’s ‘A’ Team Final

Close – 10:30pm Approx

Looking to clear them out for a small fee including postage to anyone that might like a copy. The list is below and each copy will cost £4.00 including UK P&P.

• SPA Super 15′s Blackball Final 2007 – Monkland’s B v Clackmannanshire (Yes we still have 2 copies!!!)
• Lynette Horsburgh v Bradley Parker – GB9 Challenge Last 32 (3 copies available)
• Thomas Ainsworth-Smith v Craig Dixon – GB9 Challenge Semi Final (1 copy available)
• GB9 Southern Masters Round 4 – Daryl Peach v Karl Boyes (3 copies available)
• GB9 Southern Masters Semi Final – Imran Majid v Darren Appleton (5 copies available)

If you would like to purchase any of these DVD’s then drop us an email on enquiries@cuesport.tv – we will not be making anymore so it is first-come first-serve, payment will have to be made via PayPal.

If we come across anymore I will make sure they get listed as well!

Friday 2nd March

9:00am – MENS B – Wiltshire v West Berkshire

10:45am – LADIES A – Oxfordshire v Hampshire B

12:45pm – MENS A – East London v Cumbria

2:30pm – LADIES A – Wiltshire v Staffordshire A1

4:30pm – MENS B – Cumbria v Hampshire

6:00pm – Men’s Individuals (Matches to be decided)

Saturday 3rd March

11:00am – MENS A – London v Berkshire

12:45pm – MENS C – Bristol C2 v Oxfordshire

2:30pm – SENIORS – Cambridgeshire v Bristol

4:30pm – MENS A – West Yorkshire v Middlesex

6:15pm – LADIES A – Essex v Derbyshire

8:15pm – MENS B – Derbyshire v Berkshire

10:00pm – Individuals – Matches TBC

Sunday 4th March

9:00am – Individuals

1:00pm – MENS B Semi Final

3:00pm – Mens Individual Final

4:45pm – MENS A – Team Final

This event has featured on Cuesport TV for the last 3 years and has grown once again with over 450 players taking part this year.

At this moment in time the event will be on pay-per-view for the small price of just £2.99, if we manage to sign a last minute coverage sponsorship deal then we will try our best to make this a free event.

In the current business climate it is becoming more and more difficult to find sponsors and advertisers for what we do so we have to charge for the live events. If the University event happens to be on PPV then you can get a 50% discount by joining our mailing list (you will see a banner link to this on the right hand side of Cuesport TV.)

The coverage that we are showing starts on Friday morning at 10:00am (24th February) and concludes on Sunday 26th February at around 3:00pm. The first two days will conclude at around 7:00pm but please check the live event page or Facebook for updates.

If you are a Twitter user then you can follow us during this live event on the following account @cuesporttv we will be using hashtag #upcbucs2012.

There will be some very high quality pool to watch across the two days with players including 2011 Singles Champion Adam Brown, 2011 BAPTO Champion Shane Thompson, Former World Champion Andy Lucas and of course Sarah Trudgett in the ladies event.

Our coverage kicks off at 12 noon on Saturday 18th Feb with the Senior’s and Junior singles events.

On Sunday 19th February we have action once again from 12 noon this time in the men’s and ladies event.

The event is only £3.00 on PPV and you can buy it here: EBPF National Tour Finals

In February we now have two great live events for you on PPV.

The first is the English Blackball Pool Federation National Tour Finals from Club 147 in Leicester, this new event to our calendar features all of the qualifiers from the Regional Blackball Tours in 2011.

Some of the names featured will be former World and European Champion, Andy Lucas and National Singles winner, Adam Brown.

There will be live action from the Juniors and Seniors on the Saturday (18th February) and from the Ladies and Men’s event on the Sunday (19th February).

The action will only cost you £3.00 to view for the whole weekend and you can purchase on the link above.

Our second event of the month comes from the UPC BUCS 8-Ball Championships in Great Yarmouth. We have covered the University event now since 2009 and it is always a very entertaining weekend. The singles and team events get stronger and attract more new teams and players each year.

This year the action is live from Thursday 23rd February until Sunday 26th February and will cost just £3.00 for the whole event on the link above.

Please join us on these events your input is very welcome.