Welcome to the latest issue of the Snooker247 Newsletter! Sent out to our subscribers on November 5. In this edition, we cover the most exciting moments from recent matches, behind-the-scenes updates, and upcoming tournaments you won't want to miss. 🎯 Snooker News November 5: 😱 Wu Yize's Title Defence Ends on the Final Pink in Nanjing 🔥 Chang Ends Zhao's Run as the Last Four Are Set 🌍 Around the World: Un-Nooh's 147, Irish Women's Open, Pan Am Under Way & Q Tour Europe in

Ask ten snooker players whether ash or maple makes the better cue and you’ll get ten confident answers, most of them contradicting each other. That’s because the choice is less about which wood is better and more about which one suits your game, your preferences and the way you like a cue to feel through the shot. This guide breaks down the real differences between ash and maple snooker cues, what each wood does well, and how to decide between them. Why the wood matters A sno

Welcome to the latest issue of the Snooker247 Newsletter! Sent out to our subscribers on October 29. In this edition, we cover the most exciting moments from recent matches, behind-the-scenes updates, and upcoming tournaments you won't want to miss. 🎯 Snooker News October 29: 🏆 Kyren Wilson Ends 19-Month Wait With Northern Ireland Open Title 🔭 Nanjing Awaits: Zhao Seeks to Stop the Rot as Wu Defends 🌍 Around the World: Malaysia's Women's Tour Debut, Evans' Kuala Lumpur Wi

Welcome to the latest issue of the Snooker247 Newsletter! Sent out to our subscribers on October 22. In this edition, we cover the most exciting moments from recent matches, behind-the-scenes updates, and upcoming tournaments you won't want to miss. 🎯 Snooker News October 22: 😱 Shock After Shock: O'Sullivan and Trump Out in Belfast 💙 Mark Allen Returns, but Says He Is in a 'Bad Place' 🌍 Around the World: Cheung's Breakthrough, Ng On Yee's Record Third Sydney Title, USSA O

Welcome to the latest issue of the Snooker247 Newsletter! Sent out to our subscribers on October 15. In this edition, we cover the most exciting moments from recent matches, behind-the-scenes updates, and upcoming tournaments you won't want to miss. 🎯 Snooker News October 15 2026: 🏆 Lisowski Defends as Northern Ireland Open Draw Is Revealed 🏠 Mark Allen Scheduled for Belfast Return 🌍 Around the World: Nanjing Awaits, Australian Open This Weekend, Pan Am Countdown & Q Tour

Welcome to the latest issue of the Snooker247 Newsletter! Sent out to our subscribers on October 8. In this edition, we cover the Shenzhen Open final, a breakthrough week for Yuan Sijun, and the upcoming tournaments you won’t want to miss. 🎯 Snooker News October 8: 🏆 Wu Yize Ends His Wait With Shenzhen Open Title ⭐ Yuan Sijun’s Breakthrough Week Ends One Step Short 🌍 Around the World: China Takes the Top Two Rankings Spots, Women’s Tour Heads Down Under, Pan Am Championshi

Most of the makers in this series build to their own name. GBL is different: it's the in-house cue range of Green Baize, a Stockton-on-Tees retailer, commissioned and specified by owner Stu Green rather than built by his own two hands. That distinction matters, and we'll come back to it — but the evidence behind GBL's reputation is some of the strongest and most specific of any maker covered here. Who actually makes a GBL cue By Green Baize's own account, Stu Green doesn't ma

Britannia Cues doesn't fit neatly into either category most of this series has covered so far. It isn't a one- or two-person workshop building to individual order like Robin Cues or Stamford Cuemakers. It isn't a retailer stocking other people's brands under one roof either, the problem we found with a couple of other UK names. It's a genuine specialist manufacturer: a Coventry-based company with its own workshop and showroom, making its own branded cues at real volume, and s

Most of the makers in this series measure their history in decades. Birmingham Billiards measures it in generations. Founded in 1936 and still family-run, now in its third generation, the workshop has outlasted most of the brands it once competed alongside, and it's still making hand-spliced snooker cues from its base in Aldridge, England, today. A table maker that never stopped making cues Birmingham Billiards' primary craft is actually bespoke snooker and pool tables — incl

Ask snooker players outside the UK where the best value in hand-made cues is right now, and Thailand comes up more often than almost anywhere else. It's not a coincidence. The country has built a genuine cue-making industry over the past two decades, one that ranges from individual professionals hand-finishing cues under their own name to operations large enough to sponsor a world championship. We've now profiled three of the country's most established names in detail. Here's

Welcome to the latest issue of the Snooker247 Newsletter! Sent out to our subscribers on October 1. In this edition, we cover the most exciting moments from recent matches, behind-the-scenes updates, and upcoming tournaments you won't want to miss. 🎯 Snooker News October 1: 💥 Shenzhen Open Shocks Galore as Williams and Zhao Fall Early 💔 Jimmy White's Fortnight Ends in Agonising Fashion 🌍 Around the World: Shenzhen Classic From Xu Si and Wu Yize, Australian Women's Open He

Most of the independent makers in this series are a workshop, maybe two. Niche Cues is a different shape of business entirely: a Thailand-headquartered cue maker that has built out a genuine network of factories, academies and shops rather than a single bench. Its own site lists a main factory in Chanthaburi, a second factory in Bangkok's Romkao area, a third in Chiang Mai, a shop and factory in Rayong, a snooker academy attached to the Chanthaburi factory, and a service fact

If you're choosing a new set of snooker balls, two names come up a lot: Aramith 1G and Dynaspheres. Both are Belgian brands and both make phenolic resin balls. They're aimed at different priorities, though, so here's how they compare. Aramith 1G: The Tournament Standard Aramith has supplied Tournament Champion balls to the professional game for over 40 years. The 1G set looks like a standard Tournament Champion set, but it's built to a tighter spec. A standard Tournament Cham

Search "Maximus Cues" and you won't find a workshop website with a founder's story on it — you'll find the brand's cues stocked by specialist retailers across the UK, and its name attached to two of the biggest events in women's snooker. That's the pattern with several of Thailand's cue makers: the profile is built through who plays the cues and who stocks them, rather than through a polished maker's-own website. Maximus is one of the country's most established names in that

Most cue makers who supply top players learned the trade at a lathe. Sunny Akani learned it at the table. Akani Songsermsawad started playing snooker at eight, turned professional in 2015, and still competes on the tour while running a cue-making business from Bangkok. That combination is the heart of his pitch: he builds cues the way a player thinks about them, and he has been noticed at the very top of the game. One British tabloid, in coverage quoted on his own site, credi

When Mark Selby lifted the World Championship trophy for the second time in May 2016, the cue in his hands needed work before he could pick it up again. The ferrule had worn down from years of use, the shaft showed the marks of a title-winning run, and the people who fixed it were the same family who'd built the cue for him a decade earlier: Stamford Cuemakers, working out of a small Lincolnshire workshop that most of the sport has never heard of. That's the pattern with the

Welcome to the latest issue of the Snooker247 Newsletter! Sent out to our subscribers on September 24. In this edition, we cover the most exciting moments from recent matches, behind-the-scenes updates, and upcoming tournaments you won't want to miss. 🎯 Snooker News September 24: 🌪️ Jimmy White, 64, Rolls Back the Years in Leicester 🤝 Mark Allen's Absence From the Tour Continues 🌍 Around the World: Shenzhen Open Preview, Irish Women's Open, US League Returns & European Di

When most players think about upgrading their cue, a handful of names dominate the conversation — Peradon, John Parris, and other big production houses that supply pro shops and sponsor televised events. However, snooker has a quieter, more personal tradition running alongside these major brands: the independent snooker cue maker. These artisans work alone or in small teams, crafting cues one at a time rather than by the thousand. The Value of Independent Cues These smaller o

Robin Cook runs Robin Cues from Carlby, a small village near Stamford in Lincolnshire, England — and despite operating well outside the spotlight enjoyed by some of the bigger-name English cue makers, he's built one of the most loyal followings of any independent snooker cue maker. Cook has been making, repairing and altering snooker, billiards and pool cues for over 30 years, working entirely to individual customer specification from carefully selected timbers. What Players

While the UK dominates the world of independent snooker cue making, Kevin De Roo has built a strong reputation from the other side of the Atlantic, working out of Vancouver, Canada under the Deroo Cues name. He's frequently recommended in cue-sports forums as one of the go-to names for players outside the UK looking for genuinely handmade, professional-quality snooker cues — with a client base that reportedly extends across Asia as well as North America. What Sets Deroo Cues