Carlo Biado in 2026: How the Predator-Powered Filipino Champion Is Setting the Pace for Modern Pool

Carlo Biado walked into 2026 with a target on his back and a trophy case that already separated him from the rest of his generation. Two World Pool Championships, a World Ten-Ball crown, a US Open run that turned into a benchmark for the Philippine pool program, and a quiet endorsement deal with Predator Cues that has come to look a lot like the modern equivalent of Efren Reyes carrying a Mezz or Earl Strickland carrying a Meucci into the Mosconi Cup era. What makes this year different is not just the depth of his trophy haul. It is how completely his game travels.

Through May, Biado has already won the 2026 ACBS Asian Men’s Ten-Ball Championship in Jakarta and the 2026 US Open One-Pocket Championship in Las Vegas. Both titles, taken inside a ten-week window, helped catapult him from outside the top five to a fixture inside the top three of the World Pool-Billiard Association rankings. He arrived at the TAOM Arena Open in Kuala Lumpur seeded second, behind only Fedor Gorst, and he leaves Malaysia as one of the favorites for Brentwood at the UK Open later this month.

The 2026 Run So Far

The Asian Ten-Ball title in late January was the first real signal. Biado dismantled Hong Kong’s Robbie Capito 11-7 in the final after navigating a field that included most of the Asian Mosconi Cup pool. Ten-ball, with its tighter call-shot rules and unforgiving rack spread, has always been considered the technician’s discipline, and Biado is unmistakably a technician. He plays low and slow, builds patterns three balls ahead, and rarely overhits position. The Capito final was a clinic in cue ball discipline rather than break power.

March brought a different kind of test. The US Open One-Pocket Championship at Griff’s in Las Vegas is one of the toughest tournaments in cue sports because it punishes any player who tries to rush a rack. Biado lost the hot seat final to fellow Filipino Roland Garcia in a five-hour grind, then came back through Tony Chohan and beat Garcia 5-1 in the rematch. One-pocket is a discipline built around safeties, banks, and rail awareness. Biado’s command of all three has been the throughline in every interview he has given since.

April featured a quarterfinal exit at the World Eight-Ball Championship, which on paper looks like a stumble. Players who watched the bracket called it something else. Eight-ball at the world level is more pattern-driven than nine-ball, and a single missed cluster decision against Aloysius Yapp ended the run early. The lesson Biado took from the loss showed up in his Asian Open prep and in the way he is sequencing breaks at TAOM.

Why the Predator Setup Suits His Game

Biado’s Predator partnership began before his 2024 World Ten-Ball title and has only deepened since. He travels with a BLAK Series playing cue, a P3 Series sneaky cue for warmup, and a stack of REVO carbon fiber shafts in both Radial and Uniloc joints depending on the event. What makes the pairing work is not the name on the butt. It is the way the low-deflection profile of the REVO shaft locks onto a stroke that already prizes soft inside English over hard cut shots.

If you want to study what a Biado-style cue looks like in the shop, the Predator PREBLK54 BLAK Series Cue is the closest match for his current playing cue. It carries the same shaft profile, the same Uni-Loc Radial collar, and the same thin tapered hit that lets a careful player draw the cue ball four diamonds without overstroking. For players who want the practical workhorse version of his approach, the Predator P3 Black No Wrap PREP3BN is the same hit at a more affordable price point and is the model many of his sparring partners actually travel with.

The shaft is the bigger part of the story. Biado has been pairing the REVO with both Radial and Uniloc joints depending on which butt he is matching, and the Carbon Fiber Shafts category at the shop tracks the same options his road kit holds. The Bull Carbon BCF, Whyte Carbon WCFP, Mezz Ignite, and Tiger Fortis Pro give players a clear ladder of carbon options if a real REVO setup is out of reach. Biado has been candid in recent interviews that he switched fully to carbon fiber for one reason. He wanted every fraction of squirt removed from the cue so that his inside English would behave the same on a fast cloth in Saudi Arabia as it did on a slower table in Manila.

What the Filipino School Looks Like in 2026

Biado is not the only Filipino at the top of the rankings, but he is the one shaping how the next generation is being coached. Roland Garcia, Bernie Regalario, and James Aranas all came through the same Manila grind room culture, and all three have visible Biado influence in their stroke and pattern selection. The hallmark is patience. Where the European school under Joshua Filler and Albin Ouschan has emphasized break speed and run-out aggression, the Filipino school under Biado has doubled down on cue ball management. The break is treated as a means to control, not a weapon.

That difference matters at events like the UK Open Pool Championship in Brentwood, which runs May 26 through 31. The format at Brentwood is single race to nine on the redemption side and race to ten in the winners bracket, with rolling racks and a quiet rail. Biado’s stroke is a near perfect match for those conditions. He is not the fastest player in the field. He is the one most likely to win four straight racks without conceding a chance.

For amateurs who want to model the Filipino school, the closest entry point is a sneaky pete with a clean low-deflection shaft. Biado has been spotted multiple times warming up with a sneaky in practice rooms, which is why models like the Scorpion SCO122 Sneaky Pete with Carbon Fiber Shaft have been moving so quickly through our shop. The geometry is honest, the joint is forgiving, and the hit is closer to a high-end cue than the price tag suggests.

What to Watch at the UK Open

Three storylines are worth tracking in Brentwood. The first is Biado’s path through the round of 64. If the draw lands him against any of the Predator Pro Billiard Series regulars before the round of 16, the match will be a stylistic clash worth watching live. The second is whether he can break the Joshua Filler stranglehold on the event. Filler is bidding for a three-peat, and Biado is the player most often cited inside the Matchroom commentary booth as the one who can disrupt it. The third is whether Predator escalates its visible presence around him during the event. The pro team is already pushing the Predator Cues category hard with new BLAK Series builds, and a Biado UK Open title would do for the line what Yapp’s earlier title did in 2025.

Where to Start If You Want to Play This Style

The honest answer is that a player does not pick up Biado’s game by buying a Predator. The cue is downstream of the routine. Players who want to learn from the way he sets up over the ball, holds his bridge low, and lets the cue do the work should spend more time on speed control drills than on cue shopping. That said, equipment matters when you start to play matches under pressure. The progression that most local players take is the same one Biado walked.

You start with a clean, balanced cue at the Pool Cues entry tier. You graduate to a low-deflection wood shaft, often something in the Pechauer or McDermott line, before deciding whether a carbon fiber shaft suits how you actually shoot. You move to a Predator P3 or BLAK once you start playing in regional tournaments and need a cue that does not change personality from one humidity bracket to another. And if you reach the point where the cue is no longer the variable in the room, you find yourself doing exactly what Biado has been doing for a decade. You stop changing equipment and start sharpening the stroke that earned the equipment in the first place.

Biado will not announce his next Predator setup tweak until after the UK Open. What he will do, almost certainly, is win another round at Brentwood with the same calm tempo that won him two World Pool Championships and two Filipino-school titles already this year. The rest of the field has the gear. He has the routine that the gear was built to support.

About Corey Bernstein

Corey Bernstein is a competitive pool player, billiards equipment specialist, and co-owner of Quarter King Billiards in Wilmington, North Carolina. With over a decade of experience in the sport, Corey has competed in regional APA and BCA sanctioned tournaments and maintains an intimate knowledge of cue construction, shaft technology, and table mechanics. As a certified dealer for brands including Predator, McDermott, Jacoby, Viking, Lucasi, Meucci, Joss, and Cuetec, Corey personally tests and evaluates every cue that comes through the shop. His hands-on approach to the business means he has racked thousands of hours behind the table — breaking in shafts, comparing tip compounds, and dialing in the nuances that separate a good cue from a great one. When he is not behind the counter or on the table, Corey is researching the latest advances in low-deflection technology, carbon fiber shaft construction, and cue ball physics. His articles on Quarter King Billiards combine real-world playing experience with deep product knowledge to help players at every level find the right equipment for their game.