Bali Draws the World September 28 to October 5: A 32-Team Doubles 10-Ball Worlds, a Women’s 9-Ball Crown and $550,000

Eight days after the last ball drops in Ho Chi Minh City, the Predator Pro Billiard Series packs up and moves to Bali. From September 28 through October 5, the Bali Nusa Dua Convention Center hosts three separate international tournaments with a combined prize fund of $550,000. One of them is a world championship that did not exist three years ago, and it is the one worth clearing your schedule for.

Three Titles, Eight Days, $550,000

The schedule stacks three distinct fields into the same building, which means the streams run more or less continuously for over a week.

2026 Kamui WPA Women’s 9-Ball World Championship

September 28 through October 4. Sixty-four players, $200,000 prize fund. This is the full women’s world title at 9-ball, not a tour stop, and that distinction matters when you look back at a career twenty years later. The winner leaves Bali as a WPA world champion.

2026 Aramith Men’s Open Presented by PBC

September 28 through October 5. The field expanded from 96 spots to 128 for this edition, with a $150,000 prize fund, played at 10-ball. An open field of 128 means the early rounds are a minefield. Established champions draw hungry regional players who have nothing to lose and have been practicing for this specific week all year.

2026 Isak Billiard WPA Men’s Doubles 10-Ball World Championship

September 28 through October 5. Thirty-two teams, $200,000 prize fund. Each squad is made up of two to three players representing a single nation. The event made its debut in 2025 and has already grown its field. Players compete under their national colours, which turns a normally solitary sport into something closer to a Ryder Cup weekend.

Why Doubles Pool Is Not Just Pool With a Friend

Singles pool rewards a specific kind of selfishness. You play the shot that leaves the angle you like, on the side of the ball you shoot best, at the speed you trust. Nobody else has to live with the result.

Doubles removes that. You alternate shots, so everything you do is inherited by somebody else. The position you leave is not for you. The safety you play has to be one your partner can follow up on. The cluster you decide not to break out becomes your partner’s problem two innings later, and they will remember.

Watch a doubles match and you will see the strongest teams do three things that singles players rarely bother with.

They leave the simple angle, not the perfect one. A world-class singles player will take a thin cut with outside english to gain a slightly better line on the next ball. In doubles, that same player often rolls to a fatter, duller angle instead, because a straightforward shot handed to a partner under pressure is worth more than two degrees of position.

They talk in patterns, not shots. Teams get limited consultation depending on the ruleset, so the good ones agree on the whole run before the first ball rather than shot by shot. Which ball is the problem. Which rail they want to finish on. Whether they are running out or playing safe on the six.

They protect their partner from the shot they hate. Every player has a shot they dread, whether that is a long thin cut down the rail or a forced draw across the table. Doubles partners learn each other’s dread shots fast, and the whole strategy of an inning bends around never leaving one.

Why 10-Ball Suits a Team Event

Both the Aramith Men’s Open and the doubles championship are played at 10-ball, and that is not an accident of scheduling. Ten-ball calls every shot, allows no slop, and puts one more ball on the table than 9-ball does. The result is fewer gifts and more innings that end in a safety battle rather than a lucky roll.

For a team format that matters twice over. Called shots mean a partner can never be bailed out by a ball that happens to fall, so the standard of what counts as a good leave rises. And the extra ball means more clusters, which means more decisions about whether to break something out now or hand the problem across the table. Nine-ball would let strong teams run out too often to be interesting. Ten-ball keeps both chairs occupied.

It also makes the viewing better. When a rack ends 4-3 in safeties before anybody commits to a run, you are watching the actual craft of the game rather than a break-and-run contest.

Steal This for Your Next Scotch Doubles Night

Most leagues run scotch doubles a few times a season and most players treat it as a novelty. It is the cheapest way to improve your position play, because the feedback is immediate and it comes from a human being sitting in the chair next to you.

Try this. Play a full set of scotch doubles where the only rule you add is that the incoming player has to say out loud, before shooting, whether the leave was good, fine or bad. No arguments, no explanations. By the end of a set you will have twenty honest data points about your own position play, which is about nineteen more than a normal night of 9-ball gives you.

The second habit worth borrowing is the pre-run conversation. Before your partner breaks, the two of you look at the rack and name the trouble ball. That is the whole exercise. Naming the problem before it arrives is most of the skill in pattern play, and doubles forces you to do it out loud.

The third is speed discipline. In singles you can bail out of a bad leave with a spectacular shot. In doubles that instinct costs your team the table, so partners learn to shoot at a speed that keeps the cue ball in the middle third of the cloth. That is a habit worth keeping after the doubles night ends.

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The Case for a Cue You Do Not Have to Think About

There is a reason team events tend to surface plain, conservative cues rather than flashy ones. When you are shooting for somebody else’s inning, the last thing you want is a stick you are still negotiating with.

Joss has built cues in Rochester, New York since the 1960s, and the house style has barely moved: straight American maple, real Irish linen, stainless joint, no gimmicks. The Joss JOS01 at $310.25 is about as close to a blank canvas as a production cue gets, a four point cue that hits the same way on the first shot of the night as the last. Step up to the Joss JOS61 at $352.75 and you gain visual interest without changing the feel.

For players who want exotic wood and veneer work, the Joss JOS74 sits at $484.50, and the Joss JOSN7 at $819.40 moves into the range where a cue becomes something you hand down. All of them share the same joint and the same taper philosophy, which is the practical point. You can move up the line later without relearning your stroke.

If Joss is not your house brand, the wider pool cue selection covers every price band from league starter to custom, and a cue that travels deserves a case that protects it, which you can browse in pool cue cases.

How to Watch Bali

Every match from all three events streams live on the Pro Billiard TV YouTube channel at no cost. Draws, live scoring and results run on the Pro Billiard Series event page. With the time difference, most of the action lands overnight for North American viewers, which makes the archive the practical way to watch.

If you only have time for one thing, make it the doubles. The format produces decisions you never see in singles play, and watching two world-class players negotiate a single table in real time is the best position-play lesson available for free.

What to Take to the Table This Week

Bali is a reminder that pool at the top level is now genuinely global and genuinely varied. A women’s world championship, a 128-player open, and a national-team doubles event, all in one building, in one week. The through line in all three is that nobody wins by playing the hardest shot available. They win by leaving themselves, or their partner, something easy.

That is a habit you can build on any table, tonight, with the cue you already own. Play the shot that makes the next one boring.