CueSport TV - The Blog

Ever since we launched Cuesport TV back in 2008 we have been talking about a suitable way to make videos available for download in a cost-effective way.

That time has now arrived! From today selected content from Cuesport TV will be available to download on a paid service.

At the moment we are looking at around £2.49 ($3.99 approx) to download an entire match to your hard drive.

Longer videos like money matches will command a higher fee as storage and delivery costs are increased.

As fans of the site you are going to have to tell us what videos you want to download. Only selected content will be available at any one time and certain videos may only be available for limited periods.

The downloaded file comes as a ZIP file, within the compressed zip the actual WMV videos files will be contained that you can play back on your PC or Laptop.  MAC users will need to download VLC media player or Windows Media PLayer 9 for MAC. VLC is a great player and plays almost any video file thrown at it!

With your purchase you get 48 hours access to download the video files. Once on your computer they last for as long as you want them to.

Payment can be made with credit or debit card but you will need to login in order to purchase.

Currently available in the download store:

Craig Marsh v Kristie Caulfield - EBA Masters Final 2010

Tony Drago V Jayson Shaw - GB9 British Grand Prix 2009 - HD

Chris Melling v James Kay - GB9 British Grand Prix 2009 - HD

We need your help to make this a success, please download the videos this will help towards keeping live and on-demand video free. If you want to see a certain match/video available then please drop us an email or comment on this blog.

General 8-ball, 9-ball, billiards, cuesport tv, downloads, pool, snooker, video

Last week was manic, I left on the 23rd April (my birthday incidentally) for the long trip to Blackpool for the GB9 event at the Imperial Hotel. The long drive lasted 7 hours with traffic and I did it in one stint because… well just because I can!

I went up to my room at around 8pm and woke up the next day at 7am - obviously needed the sleep! Thanks for Tone Weafer for the two pints he had bought me prior to this, whatever he had put in them certainly did the trick!

The event itself was superb with some excellent pool played all weekend, the only problem for us was being moved from the main tournament room to the back room for the semi’s and the final on Sunday night. Big thanks to all on the GB9 team who helped move the kit to the other room and re-setup in around 30 minutes.

Videos from this event will be available shortly.

So, from Blackpool I made the trip east to Bridlington, the journey was made a it easier by having Jayson Shaw in the car who reached the semi-finals in Blackpool and needed to get to Bridlington to represent Scotland. Having a chat about pool on the journey certainly passed the time. I reached my hotel at 00:45 - they had waited up for me!

In my opinion there is not much to Bridlington, this is based solely on the walk from Rags hotel to the Spa so I don’t have much to go on in fairness, however, the Spa Theatre has provided us with the best Internet connectivity for web streaming over the past two years. This time was no exception with testing on Monday taking a matter of minutes.

The upload capacity of the line is excellent which meant I was able to stream the live content at 1200kbps, very high bitrate for live streaming!

Some good pool followed with some bad pool was the order of the week with a real mixed bag. Some great people made the week for me coming over and chatting, sharing a beer or two at the end of the day and generally providing me with some entertainment.

It was a very well-organised event (apart from putting the singles on late into the evening something that will have to be remedied for next year) and I think that everybody that took part and represented their country will come away from Bridlington feeling they have been part of something.

It was a shame that the event is no longer regarded as a World Championships, this meant less teams, but lets hope that the event can be re-invented next year to bring more teams to an awesome venue.

9-ball Pool, English/UK Pool 8-ball, 9-ball, blackball, blackpool, bridlington, eba, gb9

I have just sent out a number of tweets via @cuesporttv mentioning the fact that we seem to have had a number of video files go walkabout!

I must thank Jon Shapland for letting me know in detail what the issue was otherwise we may never have found them. It seems when we moved content from Cuesport TV across to 8-Ball Pool TV some of the files decided to find a new life in the etherworld. Good luck to them!

Thanks to file-cloning we have managed to track down files with a similar gene pool and are slowly integrating them back into the system.

If you find any videos or other media on any of our channels that come up with ‘Media Off Line’ then please let us know, no need to call the authorities we don’t want to be shutdown for video file neglect.

Thanks for your help.

General 8-ball, 8-ball pool tv, cuesport tv, jon shapland, video files

Watch live at Cuesport TV

Top Half

Neil Raybone 8 v 2 Neil Ford
Steve Petty 8 v 3 Mark Burr
Tom Courtney 7 v 8 Joe O’Connor
Katie Henrick 4 v 8 Avi Singh
Anthony Doble 8 v 4 James Gibson
Dan Darlington w/o v BYE
Josh Corkett 5 v 8 Mike Day
Nicky Scott 8 v 6 Simon Doyle
Simon Ward 6 v 8 Dave Williams
Clint I’Anson 8 v 5 Partab Singh
Dan Davy 1 v 8 Jason Bates
Scott Smith 7 v 8 Carl Morris
Ben Flack 8 v 4 Micky Lambert
Alex O’Donoughue 8 v 7 John Roe
Harry Hayman 8 v 6 Darren Hollobone
Ben Fortey 4 v 8 Ronan McCarthy

Bottom Half

Chris Melling 4 v 8 Ian Crosbie
Vinny Allen 5 v 8 Rob Chilton
Jez Graham 3 v 8 Darren Jeffery
Carl Rowe 8 v 7 Adam Davis
Gareth Hibbott 6 v 8 Tem Dixon
Nicky Griffiths 5 v 8 Jamie Graham
Danny Quartermaine 3 v 8 Chris McGee
John Sullivan 2 v 8 Craig Marsh
Tom Cousins 8 v 4 Ben Holley
Karl Sutton 8 v 7 Jack Whelan
Jordan Sheperd 8 v 1 Steve Crosbie
Ben Swinnerton 8 v 4 Darren Begley
Tony Joannou 8 v 4 Ben Francis
Rob Butterworth 6 v 8 Richard Cradduck
Andy O’Hara 4 v 8 Kyle Edwards
Darren Stickley 5 v 8 Phil Harrison

English/UK Pool 8-ball, eightball, live pool, super tour, world rules

The complete first round draw and results are below you can watch the tournament live here:

Cuesport TV - LIVE

Top Half

Neil Raybone 8 v 4 Dan Bishop
Neil Ford w/o v 0 Sunny Bale
Vikas 0 v w/o Steve Petty
Mark Burr w/o v 0 BYE
Neil Walsh 6 v 8 Tom Courtney
Joe O’Connor 8 v 2 Harry Irwin
Katie Henrick 8 v 1 Mike Miller
Avi Singh 8 v 1 Ben Davies
Anthony Doble 8 v 2 Craig Bennett
Gary Martin 2 v 8 James Gibson
BYE v BYE
Mick Hill 0 v w/o Dan Darlington
Josh Corkett w/o v BYE
Mike Day 8 v 7 Phil Hoskins
Steve Long 0 v w/o Nicky Scott
Simon Doyle w/o v 0 Lee Clough
Simond Ward 8 v 5 Carl Fitzsimon
Ben Mackie 5 v 8 Dave Williams
Clint I’Anson 8 v 4 Andy Canning
Pete Hendes 3 v 8 Partab Singh
Dan Davy w/o v 0 Mark Farnsworth
Phil Naylor 7 v 8 Jason Bates
Scott Smith w/o v BYE
Carl Morris 8 v 4 Mark Grant
Ben Flack 8 v 4 Emma Cunningham
Mickey Lambert 8 v 4 Max Nosko
Alex O’Donoghue 8 v 4 Dave Goodwin
John Roe 8 v 3 Scott Baldock
Daryl Lovegrove 0 v w/o Harry Hayman
Daz Hollobone w/o v 0 Mark Curnow
Ben Fortey w/o v BYE
Ronan McCarthy 8 v 6 Oly Bale

Bottom Half

Chris Melling y v John Sullivan
Ian Crosbie 8 v 4 Kye Overton
Vinny Allen 8 v 7 Neil Briton
Rob Chilton w/o v 0 Kieran Hawkins
Jez Graham (Pepsi) 8 v 6 Martin Ray
Darren Jeffery w/o v 0 BYE
Rich Wharton 7 v 8 Carl Rowe
Adam Davies 8 v 4 Harjeet Singh
Gareth Hibbott 8 v 4 Neil Toms
Tem Dixon 8 v 5 Neil Davey
Nicky Griffiths w/o v 0 Josh Bostock
Jamie Graham w/o v BYE
Danny Quartermaine w/o v 0 Matt Bull
Chris McGee w/0 v BYE
Ed Rumsey v John Sullivan
Danny Rosswarne v Craig Marsh
Tom Cousins v Tom Ford
Ben Holley w/o v 0 Stephen Harris
Karl Sutton 8 v 0 Silas Antoni
Nicky Dodds v Jack Whelan
Jamie Ross v Jordan Shepherd
Steve Crosbie v Lawrence Beech
Ben Swinnerton w/o v BYE
Steve O’Connor v Darren Begley
Steve Munroe v Tony Joannon
Ben Clark v Ben Francis
Rob Butterworth v Lee Thacker
Richard Cradduck v Keith Brewer
Arfan dad v Andy O’Hara
Kyle Edwards w/o v BYE
Darren Stickley v Ken Edwards
Phil Harrison w/o v BYE

English/UK Pool 8-ball, draw, live 8-ball, live pool, live stream, results, super tour, watch live pool

At the weekend (1st/2nd August) I travelled out to Keynsham Snooker Centre for the first event in this years 8-Ball Super Tour.

This World Rules 8-Ball tour carries a huge £48,000 in prize money across the four events and as a result has pulled in all the best players in the land.

It was also going to be a test for us at Cuesport TV.

We had not had a full two-day weekend live event since we launched the subscriptions and were not sure what the response would be like, it turned out to be an excellent response. We have never ever believed that all of our 22,000 monthly viewers would pay, however, in order to drive the business forward in a tough climate it was better to take less viewers that appreciated the product enough to pay.

This happened and so a big thanks to all of the viewers that did support us this weekend.

On a side note Carl Morris beat Ronan McCarthy 8-6 to lift the title and £2700.00 first prize.

English/UK Pool 8-ball, 8-ball pool, 8-ball super tour, cuesport tv, live pool, subscriptions

Isle of Man Pool Festival Returns

Ross McInnes, six-times World Pool Champion and promoter of the Isle of Man festival has today released further details of one of the hottest tickets on the pool calendar.

The 2009 Festival of Pool with run from the 27th September until the 3rd October and will be jam-packed full of tournaments and events throughout the week.

In addition to the main festival that ran last year, McInnes has also secured the EBA European Championships for the same venue during the week. There will be Mens, Womens, Senior and Junior team events plus singles in each category including a wheelchair event.

There is talk of Eurosport involvement in this event and if so it will add even more prestige to an already fantastic tournament.

Last and by no means least there will also be the first ever staging of the Inter-Continental Cup between Europe & Africa. Each continent will field a team in the following categories, Mens, Ladies, Seniors, U-23, U-18.

More exciting details to follow so stay tuned!

English/UK Pool 8-ball, blackball, douglas, eba, eightball, european championships, festival of pool, isle of man, pool, villa marina

PRESS RELEASE - MAY 5TH 2009:

£50,000 Pool Series Returns

The richest 8-ball pool tour on the UK and Irish calendars returns this weekend (8^th-10^th May) with event two of the 2008-09 CueSport TV £50,000 Pool Series. This time the event is being held in the amazing Louis Fitzgerald Hotel in Dublin, Ireland.

As the pinnacle of the Blackball pool game, these tournaments each carry a guaranteed £10,000 in prize money with the winner of each leg receiving £3,500. Simon Ward was the winner of event one, way back in October last year, when he defeated fellow Welshman Craig Marsh to win the top prize.

The Welsh players including former EBA World Champion Ben Davies, British Open Champion Tom Cousins as well as the aforementioned Simon Ward and Craig Marsh will be in attendance and as always will be tough to beat.

Another player looking to add to his list of titles is the 2009 EBA World Champion, Scott Ross. Scotsman, Ross lifted the World title in April this year and will be confident of gaining another accolade on the Blackball circuit.

CueSport TV will once again be showing all of the action from the final two days live and exclusive at www.CueSport.tv - it is completely free to view and to do so simply hit the Live Event link on the left hand side of the website.

Watch all of the action on the 9^th and 10^th May 2009 only on CueSport TV.

About Blackball:

Blackball is a fast-paced and very attacking 8-ball pool game and the CueSport TV £50,000 Pool Series is the ‘pro-tour’ for Blackball players.

Blackball is the only ‘small-ball’ 8-ball game to be recognised by the World Pool Association and in turn the International Olympic Committee. Played on a 7ft x 3.5ft table with slow napped cloth, 2-inch balls and tight ‘snooker-like’ pockets. It really is a test of cueing ability and strategy.

For more information on Blackball visit these great websites:

• www.Blackball.co.uk
• www.CueSport.tv
• www.wpa-pool.com

About CueSport TV

CueSport TV is a UK based online video and media portal specialising in pool, snooker and billiard games. Launched in October 2007 the channel has grown to serve more than 40,000 viewers per month. In addition the company also broadcasts more than 20 live events per year – the majority of which are offered for free to viewers.

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Ross McInnes lifted his second tournament title in just under a week yesterday when he took the first Legend’s Tour event in Basingstoke.

The cream rose to the top as the two standout players from the weekend met in the final. McInnes was however far too strong for Martin ‘Rocker’ Rothwell and lifted the title and the £600 in prize money with a 6-2 victory.

McInnes, who purchased a new cue around six weeks ago has been undergoing some sort of resurgence that makes him a very difficult opponent to beat. The six-times World Champion also picked up the seniors title at the EBA Masters last week.

You can watch three matches from the Legend’s Tour at CueSport TV later today.

English/UK Pool 8-ball, eightball, epa old rules, eukpf, pool, ross mcinnes

Complete last 32 draw below:

• Neil Walsh 8 v 7 Arfan Dad
• Mick Hill 8 v 6 Marcus Phillips
• Rich Wharton 8 v 2 Marc Farnsworth
• Phil Naylor 8 v 7 Dan Darlington
• Jon Bushnell 3 v 8 Tony Pyne
• Shaun Payne 4 v 8 Keith Brewer
• Tom Cousins 7 v 8 Nicky Dodds
• Lynette Horsburgh 8 v 4 Dave Bagg
• Oly Bale 8 v 4 Nicky Scott
• Ian Crosbie 8 v 5 Jella Singh
• Simon Ward 8 v 6 Bob Cooper
• Gareth Manning 3 v 8 Steve Munro
• Jordan Shepherd 6 v 8 Steve Robertshaw
• Jamie Graham 8 v 2 Neil Raybone
• Dave Sandford 3 v 8 Chris Melling
• Kev Barton 7 v 8 Ben Flack

Last 16 Draw & Results

• Neil Walsh 3 v 8 Mick Hill
• Rich Wharton 8 v 6 Phil Naylor
• Tony Pyne 8 v 4 Keith Brewer
• Nicky Dodds 5 v 8 Lynette Horsburgh
• Oly Bale 8 v 4 Ian Crosbie
• Simon Ward 8 v 6 Steve Munro
• Steve Robertshaw 8 v 1 Jamie Graham
• Chris Melling 8 v 2 Ben Flack

Quarter Final Draw & Results

• Mick Hill 8 v 5 Rich Wharton
• Tony Pyne 8 v 5 Lynette Horsburgh
• Oly Bale 7 v 8 Simon Ward
• Steve Robertshaw 1 v 8 Chris Melling

Semi Final Draw & Result

• Mick Hill 8 v 7 Tony Pyne
• Simon Ward 8 v 5 Chris Melling

Final

• Mick Hill 8 v 5 Simon Ward

English/UK Pool 8-ball, event 4, mick hill, oracle super tour, pool, simon ward, wepf, world rules