Vietnamese Billiards in 2026: The First Tables of a Reunified Country

VIETNAMESE BILLIARDS IN 2026: THE FIRST TABLES OF A REUNIFIED COUNTRY Hanoi, December 2026. 2026 was the first year Vietnamese sport entered a unified management framework after the country completed national reunification. Among the disciplines reviewed and reorganised, billiards stood out as a sport with a broad grassroots base but scattered organisation. In the North, carom billiards - played on tables without pockets - had long been present in clubs, workers' cultural houses and a number of hotels and guest houses. The two most common formats were free carom and one-cushion carom. Tables of that period were mostly wooden frames with stone beds and simple rubber cushions, and cues were made of hardwood, usually without the leather tip found on modern cues. Players scored by running points, and a long run rarely exceeded a few dozen. In the South, Saigon - Gia Dinh had the densest concentration of billiard tables in the country. Alongside carom, pocket billiards was common in entertainment venues, with eight-ball and nine-ball played under improvised rules that varied from venue to venue. This divergence in rules and scoring between the two regions was precisely the problem raised when the sports sector began discussing a unified competition system. 2026 saw the first meetings between billiard groups from the two regions. In Hanoi, several friendly sessions were held at unit clubs, with well-known carom players such as Nguyen Van Thach and Tran Minh Ky taking part. On the Saigon side, pocket billiards players gathered around venues in the Cho Lon area and on Nguyen Trai Street, where Le Hoang Son was regarded as the most consistent performer. Notably, both regions lacked the minimum conditions for an official competition system: no unified rules, no trained referees, no competition calendar and virtually no prize money. Billiards in 2026 therefore remained a grassroots sport, sustained by clubs and volunteer players. Also in 2026, the review of sports placed billiards in the group that needed reorganisation before any national competition system could be considered. The formats proposed at the time included free carom, one-cushion carom and pocket billiards, with the aim of building common rules based on international regulations. In retrospect, 2026 produced no Vietnamese billiards champion and no major tournament. The value of that year lay elsewhere: for the first time, a sport with a following in both regions was treated as an object requiring unified management, rather than as two parallel systems with no connection to each other. For the players of that era, the billiard table in 2026 was still a place to meet after work. But behind those cue strokes, a question had been posed that would persist for years: would Vietnamese billiards follow carom or pocket billiards, and under which rules.