Albin Ouschan won the Predator Austrian Open on home soil Sunday night, beating Joshua Filler 11-6 in the final at the Alpina Hotel in St. Johann im Pongau. It was Ouschan's third Predator Euro Tour title, following wins in 2012 and 2015, and it came in front of an Austrian crowd that had plenty to cheer about. Filler was chasing his 12th Euro Tour title, and given how many matches that week had gone to a final-rack decider, most people expected this one to go down to the wire. It did not. Ouschan came out firing, took advantage of some early Filler errors, and opened a 5-0 lead that he stretched to 8-1. Filler clawed it back to 8-3, then 9-5, then 10-6, but Ouschan stayed composed and closed it out. By his own account it was the best he played all week, and he said afterward that he kept getting better as the tournament went on, saving his strongest pool for the final.

The women's title went to Chen Chieh Hua, who goes by Amber, in her first-ever Predator Euro Tour appearance. She beat Austria's Jasmin Ouschan 9-4 in the final, leading 5-3 at the midpoint before pulling away. Chen had stayed in Austria after competing in the Pro Billiard Series the week before, and the decision paid off. She had to fight up from the one-loss side after an early defeat to Bojana Sarac, then beat a string of the tour's best players to reach the final. She was still emotional about it well after the match, calling it a long time since she'd last been a champion and praising Jasmin Ouschan as a great opponent in a great final. The beaten semifinalists were Sandra Baumgartner, who lost 9-2 to Chen, and Marion Jude, who fell 9-1 to Jasmin Ouschan.

One thing worth keeping straight: this is a separate event from the Pro Billiard Series that finished at the same venue the previous week. As of 2026, both the men's and women's Predator Euro Tours now carry WPA World Ranking points, which raises the stakes on every stop. The tour returns August 20-23 with the Longoni Open in Treviso, Italy.

🔗 Women’s EuroTour. 🔗 Albin Wins at Home

Matchroom announced that both the 2026 US Open and the 2026 Mosconi Cup will air live on ESPN+ this year. It marks the return of pool to ESPN for the first time since 2015, putting two of the sport's biggest American events in front of a mainstream audience that pool has rarely reached on this side of the Atlantic.

The timing is hard to miss. The last time pool had this kind of US platform, in 2015, it was Albin Ouschan and Team Europe winning the Mosconi Cup in Las Vegas. Eleven years later, Ouschan is the man who just beat Joshua Filler to win the Austrian Open, and the question Matchroom is teeing up is whether European dominance carries into Orlando this November. Fedor Gorst, the world number one and a US-based player, called the deal a very big deal for American pool in a video reacting to the news, tying it to his own goal of making Team USA for the Mosconi Cup.

For a sport whose US visibility has mostly lived on streaming and YouTube, an ESPN+ slot for the Frisco US Open in August and the Orlando Mosconi Cup in November is a real jump in reach. It also raises the stakes on the conversation running through the rest of this issue. The prestige and the platform are now lining up behind the traditional tour at the same moment the money is pooling in Beijing.

🔗 Matchroom announcement.

Jonas Magpantay won the Universal Open in Jakarta on Sunday night, beating Chinese Taipei's Chang Sheng Yi 13-5 in the final for his first World Nineball Tour title and the $15,000 top prize. Chang took an early 2-0 lead, and then Magpantay reeled off six racks in a row to go up 6-2 and never gave the lead back. From there he leaned on the shotmaking and safety play that earned him the nickname "Silent Killer," and Chang, who had chances to climb back in, undid himself with a couple of missed balls and a scratch on the break at the worst possible time.

The win caps a week where Magpantay was barely pushed. He beat Japan's Kouki Sugiyama and Indonesia's Irsal Nasution by identical 10-6 scores, then took out fellow Filipinos James Aranas 10-6 and Bernie Regalario 11-3 before closing out an all-Filipino semifinal against Jefrey Roda 11-3. The field he came through was deep. Two-time world champion Carlo Biado and US Open champion Aloysius Yapp both headlined the draw, part of the heavy Filipino contingent that has been dominating WNT ranking stops all year.

For Magpantay, who won the Qatar 10-Ball World Cup last November, this is the second major title of a career that's finally getting its due at age 32. He's now chasing a Philippine Sports Commission endorsement to play the Asian Pool Championship in Ho Chi Minh City, July 10-15.

🔗 Full Story.

On June 28 in Beijing, Wu Jiaqing beat Zheng Xiaohuai in the final of the Duya Legends Golden Nine Open to claim a ¥10 million top prize, roughly $1.47 million. It is the largest first-place check ever paid out in the sport, and Wu is the first player to win it.

The number is staggering, but the story behind it is the part worth sitting with. Wu Jiaqing was a teenage prodigy. In 2005, at 16 years old, he became the youngest WPA World 9-Ball Champion in history, a record that stood until Joshua Filler broke it. He added more world titles after that, then spent long stretches of his career out of the spotlight, away from the top of the game for years at a stretch. He was visibly emotional in the post-match interview. Two decades after his first world title, on a Chinese-style table playing a point-scoring format that has quietly become the richest discipline in the sport, he won more money in one match than most professionals earn in a career.

Golden Nine is worth understanding, because the money is not a one-off. It's a Chinese variant of 9-ball played on Chinese-style tables with a points-based scoring system: a break-and-run scores 10, a table run scores 7, a frame win scores 4, an opponent foul scores 1. The Duya Legends Tour ran a full season of these events leading into the Beijing finals, and the international field took it seriously. Johann Chua, Dennis Orcollo, Gareth Potts, Mickey Krause, and a large contingent of Filipino and Western pros all entered, drawing from a reported 600-plus players across 60-plus countries. Krause, the European Open champion and Mosconi Cup veteran, called it the biggest pool tournament in the world. On prize money alone, China has built a parallel circuit that now dwarfs anything outside the Matchroom majors, and the best players in the world are rearranging their calendars to be there.

🔗 Full Story. 🔗 News in China

Meldrum takes the U19 girls' world title. Australia's Lilly Meldrum, 18, was crowned U19 Girls World Champion at the inaugural WPA Junior and Parasport Heyball World Championships in Oslo, beating France's Rachelle Enfroy 5-4 in a tight final on June 17. The event was the first of its kind, running across five divisions with 122 athletes from 42 countries, and it's part of the WPA's broader push to grow Heyball with an eye toward the Brisbane 2032 Olympics.

Get-well wishes for Fracasso-Verner and Whiteman. Pro player Lukas Fracasso-Verner and action player Kane Whiteman were injured in a head-on car accident in the Carolinas late last week, in a collision that was reportedly not their fault. Fracasso-Verner, a McDermott ambassador and one of the stronger young American players, required surgery and is reported to be recovering well. Whiteman was taken to a separate hospital and is also expected to recover. The condition of others involved in the crash was not clear at the time of writing. The pool community has rallied with messages of support, and so do we. Here's to a full and speedy recovery for both.

🔗 U19 recap. 🔗 Car crash FB post.

The Duya Legends Tour channel has Wu Jiaqing's semifinal against Chu Bingjie posted in full, part of his run to the ¥10 million title. The commentary is in Chinese, but you don't need it. This is the best Golden Nine money can buy, played on a Chinese-style table under the point-scoring format, and it's the clearest look most American fans will get at the discipline that's quietly become the richest in the sport. Watch it on the Duya Legends Tour YouTube channel.

Money matches and the gambling side of pool

Bergman and Cousins to put $100K in the middle. Two of American pool's most familiar barbox rivals are settling it for real money. Justin Bergman and Tom Cousins, who have traded wins across the Ultimate Pool USA circuit for the past two years, meet in a 1v1 money match on July 22 with a minimum of $100,000 in the middle. It's a race to 30 in 8-ball, hosted at Blue Springs Side Pockets in Blue Springs, Missouri, and streaming exclusively on CueXTV for a $19.99 pay-per-view pass. The two are stylistic mirrors, both deliberate, both elite pattern players on the bar table, the kind of matchup where a single dry break can swing a rack and a long race rewards whoever cracks first.

Predator Indonesia International Open — Jakarta, Indonesia | July 1-4 | $100,000

Mezz Bucharest Open — IDM Club, Bucharest, Romania | July 3-5 | $39,000 WNT Ranking

2AM Prague Open — 2AM Billiards, Prague, Czech Republic | July 8-11 | $35,000 WNT Ranking

Asian Pool Championship Stage 2 — Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam | July 10-15

McDermott Open — Yale Billiards, Wallingford, CT | July 16-19 | $29,300 WNT Ranking

WPBA Oneida WPA Women's 8-Ball World Championship — Oneida Casino Hotel, Green Bay, WI | July 22-26

Vice City Classic — Classic Billiards, Florida | July 29-August 2 | $71,200 WNT Ranking

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