Vietnamese Carom Billiards: Medals in Hand, Data Still Missing

In an arena in Binh Duong, at the deciding game of a world-level event, a Vietnamese cueist bends over the table, sets the cue, and the whole crowd holds its breath. After the final shot, applause bursts out like a wave. The media will record that moment in a few lines: victory, glory, history. As for me, sitting back after the lights go out, what troubles me lies in the gap. We have a medal, but we do not yet have a data set thick enough to explain why that shot won and the other lost.

Vietnam's standing in the world of carom billiards has been established by medals. Bao Phuong Vinh rose to become world champion in the 3-cushion discipline, Tran Quyet Chien has left his mark at many World Cup events, and a generation of young cueists keeps appearing in international knock-out rounds. The Binh Duong arena has become a familiar meeting point for major tournaments. Those achievements are enough to confirm a rising billiards scene. But precisely because it is rising, we need to look straight at the foundation beneath it.

Carom billiards differs from football in one fundamental way: it is a sport of metrics that can be measured almost absolutely. Each match is recorded through the number of innings, the average, the longest run, and the number of times a game is finished in a single inning. A good cueist does not merely win, but wins with stable efficiency across many tournaments. This is fertile ground for data analysis, and it is also where we are leaving a blank.

What is worrying is not the absence of a few numbers, but the absence of a recording system standardised enough for those numbers to be compared across years. When I tried to retrieve the data of a Vietnamese cueist across three seasons, I found patchwork tables: one tournament had efficiency statistics, another only had final results, and most qualifying matches were not recorded in detail. To judge whether a player has truly improved or merely had a lucky week, I need data from the whole series of tournaments. That series does not exist.

Doubt is not for denial, but for digging deeper before announcing a finding. I learned this during my years following youth football: a player who scores four goals at a big tournament is not necessarily a star if we do not cross-check the entire season. In billiards, the principle is even stricter. A cueist can win a tournament thanks to a few long runs, but the average across the whole event is the real measure. If we only look at the trophy, we are reading the tip of the iceberg.

What does the submerged part contain? In carom, a match can last for hours, and the winner is usually the one who keeps the steadiest rhythm, not the one with the most beautiful shot. Data on rhythm, on the success rate of difficult shots, on how a cueist handles being behind on points, all lie in a zone that current statistics tables have not touched. We know who won, but we rarely know why.

I have spent many evenings rewatching carom matches streamed online, timing each inning myself and noting how often a cueist lost the turn because of small mistakes. That work is time-consuming, but it gives me something the scoreboard cannot: a picture of stability. And what I found made me less excited about quick praise. Some cueists celebrated after a winning tournament had very volatile efficiency between matches, while a few lesser-known faces kept remarkable consistency.

The spreadsheet comes before the dream. I do not draw the future, I only measure the dust of time settling on each metric. If Vietnam wants to hold its place at the top, building a proper billiards data system is a necessary step. The strong billiards federations of the world all keep detailed match databases, enabling opponent analysis before events, long-term form tracking, and the discovery of young talent. We have medals, but we analyse by memory and by feel.

Here a counter-view worth weighing appears. Many people argue that billiards is a sport of feel, of the cue hand and of soaring moments, so data matters less than in football. I disagree, but I also do not deny the role of feel. Feel is what carries a cueist to the decisive shot. But feel cannot help a sport plan for the next ten years. A soaring moment can repeat for an individual, but it cannot repeat for a whole generation without a process.

The biggest risk of missing data is that we mistake luck for ability. A cueist who wins thanks to a favourable draw will be treated like a true champion, and that can lead to investments in the wrong place. Conversely, a young talent with good efficiency but no trophy will be overlooked, because no data table is persuasive enough to introduce them to the people who manage. In football, I once witnessed exactly this scenario, and it made me always re-check every number before believing it.

Six years ago, I built a manual tracking sheet for dozens of young footballers, simply because I could not find ready-made data. That spreadsheet later helped me spot a player forgotten after an injury. That experience taught me that a crude tool is still better than obscurity, but a crude tool cannot replace a system. Vietnamese billiards is exactly at that crossroads: enough achievements to be confident, but not yet enough data to understand itself.

I do not write to praise cueists. I write to preserve the layers they leave on the billiards table. A mature sport is measured by the trophies in its hall of fame, and also by its ability to answer why it wins and how it will keep winning.

So what would change my mind? If over the next few seasons domestic tournaments publish full per-match statistics, and an independent analysis group starts cross-checking them, I will believe that Vietnamese billiards is truly laying a foundation. But if medals keep coming while gaps in data remain behind them, I will still sit back after the lights go out, wondering whether I am looking at a mature sport, or just beautiful moments recorded and then forgotten.