Reinvent Your Life

YC&AC Billiards 2023 Report

June 6, 2024

Words: Eddie Wu, YC&AC Billiards Captain

St. Paddy’s Day: Snooker was well represented at last year’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade on 11 March 2023. Showcasing the diversity of sports we have at the YC&AC to our wider community, we hope this event can help spark an interest in visiting or joining our Club.

JSA Tournaments: Our collaboration with the Japan Snooker Association (JSA) continued through 2023 and has become a regular fixture for JSA Tournaments, which are being held at the YC&AC four times a year. This has brought in a total revenue of 130,000 yen last year, plus spending on F&B. The partnership has led to a series of generous donations by Chakrit Srisinghasongkram, including replacing the cloth on both snooker tables and two brand new sets of snooker balls. Two JSA tournament players also became YC&AC members in 2023, attracted by the top-class facilities and reasonable cost compared to other venues in the Kanto area.

Chakrit Srisinghasongkram playing in the JSA Kanto Open on 23rd September 2023

Billiards Lockers: In March, we finally managed to locate the master/spare keys for the cue lockers in the Billiards room, allowing us to take a full inventory of the locker contents and allow our regular snooker players to use the spare lockers.

New Members: We welcomed new members Atsushi Endo (top level snooker player) in March, Koichiro Yasuda (top level snooker player) in October, and Ayako Saito (top level pool player, keen to learn snooker) in August. We are grateful to Endo-san in particular as he has contributed to many improvements, such as replacing the tips on snooker and pool cues, and re-marking the ball spots on the snooker tables.

B-Corsairs YouTube Video: Our Sports Manager Yusuke arranged a very unique and entertaining opportunity to host 3 top players from the Yokohama B-Corsairs Pro Basketball team, who came to the YC&AC for a video shoot as part of a series of YouTube videos of the players competing in sports other than basketball. We designed an original mini snooker game for the players to test their skills, assisted by our very own Christopher Dunn who guided them through the challenge. This was another great opportunity to promote the YC&AC to the general public, especially for lesser known sports like snooker. The final cut of the video can be watched here on YouTube.

Snooker players Christopher Dunn and Eddie Wu at the B-Corsairs video shoot on 22 August 2023

YC&AC Snooker Championship: On 9th December 2023 we kicked off the annual YC&AC Snooker Championship, with 8 members competing for a place in the Finals. We split into 2 groups for round-robin games, with the winner of each group progressing to the Finals. In Group A, Neil Lyons came out on top, and Beat Sturzenegger was the runner-up, followed by Fritz Hagi and Alex Hendy. In Group B, Kazuma Miyamoto was on top, and Eddie Wu was the runner-up, followed by Christopher Dunn and Ayako Saito. In the Finals, Kazuma Miyamoto was crowned the 2023 Champion, while Neil Lyons took 2nd place, Beat Sturzenegger 3rd place and Eddie Wu 4th place. We had some very close and competitive games, and all had a great time playing in the tournament.

Group A: Neil Lyons, Alex Hendy, Beat Sturzenegger, and Fritz Hagi (from left to right)

Group B: Eddie Wu, Ayako Saito, Kazuma Miyamoto, Christopher Dunn (from left to right)

Runner-up and Champion: Neil Lyons and Kazuma Miyamoto (from left to right)

Willi Holzer: Finally, we would like to pay tribute to legendary Club member Willi Holzer, a snooker player who’s name appears on several boards around the Billiards room with record scores from the ‘90s. Willi passed away on the 7th Jan 2024. We found 2 beautiful snooker cues in Willi’s locker No.18 and we offered to return them to the family, but instead they generously donated the cues to YC&AC in memory of Willi. If any members would like to use them, please get in touch with the Snooker Captain.