International billiard federation

INTERNATIONAL BILLIARD FEDERATION

The International Billiards & Snooker Federation (IBSF) is an organisation that governs non-professional snooker and English billiards around the world. As of January 2020, the organisation is headquartered in Doha, Qatar.

History

The World Billiards and Snooker Council (WB&SC) was established in 1971, following a meeting of a number of national associations at a hotel in Malta during the World Amateur Billiards Championship. The associations were dissatisfied that the Billiards and Snooker Control Council was controlling both the UK and international games. Player and journalist Clive Everton served as the first secretary, and his office served as the first office of the WB&SC. In 1973, the WB&SC renamed itself as the International Billiards and Snooker Federation (IBSF) and began to control non-professional billiards and snooker championships.
Aims and structure
The aims and objectives of the IBSF are to "co-ordinate, promote and develop the sports of billiards and snooker on a non-professional level" and to manage the following competitions:^[2]

• 
  IBSF World Snooker Championship
  
• 
  IBSF World Six-red snooker Championships
  
• 
  IBSF World Team Snooker Championship
  
• 
  IBSF World Under-18 Snooker Championship
  
• 
  IBSF World Under-21 Snooker Championship
  
• 
  IBSF World Women Snooker Championship
  
• 
  IBSF World Masters Snooker Championships
  
• 
  IBSF World Para Snooker Championships
  
• 
  IBSF World Billiards Championship
  

By the end of 1984, the IBSF had thirty countries as members.^[5] As of January 2020, the IBSF has seventy-three affiliated countries categorised into one of the five Olympic regions: Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe and Oceania. The IBSF board of directors has four executive officers (president, vice-president, secretary, and treasurer) plus two representatives from each Olympic region. The executive officers are responsible for the day-to-day running of the Federation and are answerable to IBSF members at the annual general meeting, which is normally held during the period of the IBSF World Snooker Championships.^[2]
Relationships to other organisations
The IBSF—alongside the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA)—was one of the two snooker-focused organisational members of the World Confederation of Billiards Sports (WCBS).^[6] The WCBS is an organisation that promotes cue sports in the form of carom, pool and snooker; one of its aims is to gain the acceptance of cue sports disciplines into the Olympic Games.^[6]
The WPBSA terminated its relationship with the IBSF on 31 July 2017, over conflicts involving the two organisations' relative leadership positions within WCBS, making allegations of IBSF misconduct.^[7] As a result of the split, the WPBSA has revoked the Professional Main Tour cards that were once afforded to the IBSF World Men's and World Under-21 Champions. On 5 October 2017, WPBSA announced the formation of the World Snooker Federation (WSF), with stated goals similar to those of WCBS but with a focus on amateur and professional snooker, and an invitation for regional and national amateur snooker federations to join WSF.^[8]
As the IBSF and WPBSA were unable to come to a formal agreement, as required by the WCBS, both had their WCBS membership terminated in December 2018.^[9] In March 2019, the IBSF was reinstated to the WCBS to represent snooker.
Games

• 
  A billiard, a type of shot in cue sports (see below)
  
• 
  Billiards: cue sports in general; the term "billiards" by itself is also sometimes used to refer to any of the following more specifically:
  
  • 
    Carom billiards (also known as French billiards), games in general (a chiefly non-British usage)
    
  • 
    Three-cushion billiards, even more specifically, the most popular form of carom billiards worldwide
    
  • 
    The specific game of English billiards (a chiefly British, Irish and Australian usage)
    
  • 
    Pool (cue sports) (pocket billiards) games, such as eight-ball and nine-ball, in general (a chiefly colloquial North American usage)
    
• 
  See the list of cue sports for various other games with "billiards" in their names; also more specifically:
  
  • 
    Pin billiards, a fairly large number of billiard games that use a pin, or a set of "pins", or "skittles"
    
  • 
    Bar billiards, a game combining elements of bagatelle and English billiards
    
• 
  Electric billiards, an obsolete term for pinball (from billard électrique in French, in which pinball is today called flipper, a borrowing from English)
  

Mathematics and physics[

• 
  Billiard (number), the long-scale name used in most European languages for the number 10¹⁵ (called quadrillion in the short scale generally used in English)
  
• 
  Dynamical billiards, the mathematical theory of particle trajectories within a closed reflective boundary
  

People

• 
  Harry Billiard (1883–1923), Major League Baseball pitcher
  
• 
  Maria Duchêne-Billiard (1884–?), French contralto of the Metropolitan Opera
  
• 
  (née Billiard, 1884–1976), American painter, and wife of Robert Pelton Sibley
  
• 
  Efren Reyes Philippine Professional Billiard Player
  

See also

• 
  Billiards World Cup Association, a governing body for carom billiards
  
• 
  Billard, a French rolling stock construction company
  
• 
  Bobbi Billard (born 1975), American model