Oliver Szolnoki was a quarterfinalist and not much more at the European Open back in March. Three months later he is the hottest player in Europe and one good summer away from a Mosconi Cup debut.

The 29-year-old from Hungary closed out the Mezz Hill-Hill Estonia Open in Tallinn the first weekend of June, beating defending champion Pijus Labutis 11-9 in the title decider. That win was not a one-off. It was the third World Nineball Tour ranking title Szolnoki has collected in roughly two months, after he took the Bob Stocks Memorial past Fraser Patrick and then beat Albert Januarta in the Scottish Open final.

Win one of these smaller ranking stops and you bank some points and a decent check. Win three of them in a single stretch and you start moving up a board that matters a lot more than any single bracket. Szolnoki now sits third in the 2026 Mosconi Cup standings for Team Europe, behind only UK Open champion Joshua Filler and European Open winner Moritz Neuhausen. For a player who had never been part of that conversation, that is a serious jump.

The Estonia Open final itself was a grind. Labutis, the Lithuanian who won this same event in 2025 and added the Hanoi Open and a Mosconi Cup spot later that year, was trying to defend a title in front of a partisan Tallinn crowd at the Hill Hill Billiard Café. He pushed Szolnoki the distance. Szolnoki found the two racks that mattered and the result held. The event ran double-to-single elimination, race to 7 in the early going, on sixteen Mr. Sung tables dressed in fresh Simonis 860 and Aramith Tournament balls, with a $25,000 prize fund on the line.

The Mosconi Cup qualification cut-offs for 2026 have not been confirmed yet, and three automatic spots plus two captain's wildcards is the structure everyone is working from. None of that is settled. What is settled is that a Hungarian who was an afterthought in March has played his way into the picture, and he has done it on the road, at the events most pros treat as warm-ups. That tells you something about the form.

On the American side of that same Mosconi board, Thorsten Hohmann leads the qualification race after switching his allegiance from Germany to the USA ahead of this season, with Lukas Fracasso-Verner right behind him. The European depth chart looks like a wall right now. The American one looks like a question.

🔗 Breakdown, 🔗 Bracket Results

While the men were in Tallinn, the best women in the world were at the Soaring Eagle Casino in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, for the WPBA Soaring Eagle Masters. Wei Tzu-Chien left with the trophy for the second year running.

Wei never lost a match. She ran the winners' side from start to finish, stringing together wins over April Larson, Yuki Hiraguchi, Seo Seoa, and three-time WPBA runner-up Kristina Zlateva before closing out the title against Margarita Fefilova Styler in the final. The event drew 63 players into a double-elimination race-to-8 field, narrowing to a single-set race-to-10 final, with $40,000 added.

The WPBA continues to add events and depth to its calendar, and the Soaring Eagle stop is one of its anchors. Wei defending it without dropping a match against that field says plenty about where her game is right now. Pia Filler and Zlateva rounded out the final four.

🔗 Full WPA Story

If you want to see the depth in that women's field for yourself, the WPBA posted Savannah Easton against Kristina Tkach from the Soaring Eagle Masters. Easton, the young American they call the Roadrunner, goes toe to toe with one of the hardest hitters in the women's game. Good look at two contrasting styles, and a reminder that the American bench is getting younger and more dangerous.

Chalk is the cheapest equipment decision you make and the one most players never think about. If you are still grabbing whatever cube is sitting on the rail, you are giving up grip and eating miscues you do not have to.

The premium chalk market has gotten serious, and we carry the names worth knowing. Taom is the Finnish chalk that started the clean-application movement, low dust, no rings on the cue ball, and a feel that pros went to once they tried it. Kamui's Roku is the other end of the same idea, built for maximum bite on tough shots where house chalk slides right off. And the newest one worth a look is Dr. V's Titlist, the chalk Shane Van Boening switched to this season after years on Master. SVB does not change his gear on a whim, and Dr. V's was built to solve the old trade-off between grip and mess.

Any of the three is a better cube than what is on your table right now. One block lives in your case and lasts a long time. For the price of a couple of games, it is the easiest upgrade to your own game there is.

🔗 Browse Chalk Options

The Predator Pro Billiard Series is in the middle of its biggest week of the summer. The Billard Beckmann Men's Open is underway at the Alpina resort in St. Johann im Pongau, Austria, a 96-player 10-ball event with a $125,000 prize fund and a $37,500 winner's check. It is the tour's third stop of the year, and it runs through June 23 with three TV tables streaming free on Pro Billiard TV.

The opening rounds put the big names on camera early. Joshua Filler drew Konstiantyn Ivanov in a featured match, fitting for a player who calls this his favorite venue. Filler won here back in 2021, edging Mario He in the final, and he likes that the whole event lives under one roof. Fedor Gorst posted from practice saying everything in his game was working, and Mario He, the Austrian, is playing his home event and looking like he is enjoying every minute of it.

Two more events share the venue this week. The Carrinho Women's Open runs June 17 through 23 with a 64-player field and a $90,000 prize fund, and the Predator Mixed Doubles Open puts 32 teams together for a $100,000 purse. The Mixed Doubles is sure to be the fan favorite, check out the confirmed teams below!

🔗 Pro Billiard Series

Out on the regional scene, Raed Shabib won the fifth stop of the Poison Lone Star Billiards Tour at Damifino in Angleton, Texas. He came through a 58-player open 9-ball field, ran the winners' side clean, and took the hot seat over Roland Stock. In the final, local favorite Ricky Hughes took the first set 6-2 and had Shabib on the ropes, but Shabib regrouped and squeezed out the second set 5-4 for his first win of the year.

Over in the Southeast, Josh Roberts kept his run on the Rack Race series going. At Stop #12, a $1,000-added event that drew 39 players to Rack & Grill II in Augusta, Georgia on June 6, Roberts came off the loss side to take the title. It was his 16th Rack Race crown since the series started in 2023, which tells you how dominant he has been on that circuit. The same weekend, Rack & Grill ran its first-ever FargoRate-capped event, a 500-and-under bracket that sold out at 32 players and was won by Wesley Rhoden, who went undefeated and beat Dallas Hopps twice to do it.

Regional tours like Lone Star, Rack Race, the Joss Tour in the Northeast, and others around the country are where most players actually get their reps and their action, so the results are worth a glance even if the names are not on a world ranking.

🔗 Lone Star Billiards Tour, 🔗 Rack Race Event

The Predator Pro Billiard Series is in Austria right now. The Billard Beckmann Men's Open runs June 16 through 23 at St. Johann im Pongau, a 96-player 10-ball event with free spectator entry, streamed on Pro Billiard TV. This is the tour's lone Austrian stop and a long-running European fixture, so expect the European heavyweights are out in force.

On the World Nineball Tour, the next ranking stop is the Universal Open in Jakarta, Indonesia, June 25 through 28, followed by Bucharest and Prague in July. The next American Major is the Florida Open in Orlando, August 4 through 9, before the big one lands at the US Open in Frisco, Texas, August 25 through 30.

On the women's side, the WPBA heads to the Oneida WPA Women's 8-Ball World Championship in Green Bay, Wisconsin, July 22 through 26.

Sources: Pro Billiard Series, Matchroom Pool schedule, WPBA

Watch where Szolnoki won his titles. Not the Major with the lights and the trophy presentation, but the Bob Stocks, the Scottish Open, a ranking stop in Tallinn. The points sitting in those events were always there. He is the one who decided to go collect them, week after week, while everyone else was pointing at the calendar's headline dates. Form is built in the rooms nobody is watching, and then it shows up where everybody is.

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