Episodes

Chris Melling had the talent. Now he had to prove he could beat the best. In Part Two of our Legends of the Cue conversation, Chris takes us inside his rise from promising young professional to one of the greatest English eight-ball players of his generation—and shares plenty of unforgettable stories from life on the road along the way. We begin with Chris’s longtime friendship with Darren Appleton. The two future champions traveled, practiced and competed together as young players, and Chris...

Long before Chris Melling became known around the pool world as “The Magician,” he was a working-class kid from Keighley, West Yorkshire, who found both a refuge and a calling in a local snooker club. In Part One of our Legends of the Cue conversation with one of the most naturally gifted and versatile cueists of his generation, Chris takes us back to the very beginning. He recalls playing on a tiny pool table as a three-year-old, spending Saturday afternoons in the pub with his father, and t...

In the concluding episode of our four-part Legends of the Cue conversation with Henrik Larsson, we meet a champion who is still winning—but increasingly focused on what he can leave behind. Fresh from another major victory in Rome, Henrik discusses why integrating wheelchair and Parasport competition alongside major professional pool events matters so deeply to him. His goal is not special treatment. It is normalization: athletes with disabilities working just as seriously at their craft and ...

What happens after you become the best—and everyone expects you to keep winning? Part 3 of our Legends of the Cue interview with Swedish wheelchair pool great Henrik Larsson begins with that question and develops into a revealing conversation about championship pressure, rivalries, mental toughness and the changing meaning of success. Henrik takes us inside his remarkable 2007 WPA World Championship victory, when outside expectations, conflict with an opponent and pressure from his own federa...

In Part 2 of our Legends of the Cue interview with Henrik Larsson, the aspiring Swedish pool player arrives in Stockholm at age 19 with no elaborate career plan. As Henrik puts it, he was simply addicted to shooting pool—playing until the last poolroom closed at five in the morning, sleeping late and starting all over again the next day. But Henrik quickly realized that becoming a great player also required finding a way to finance the journey. What follows is a fascinating story of entrep...

In Part 1 of our Legends of the Cue conversation with Swedish Parasport pool legend Henrik “Henke” Larsson, we go back long before the world championships and European titles to explore the experiences that shaped one of wheelchair pool’s greatest competitors. Henrik was just months old when a hemangioma inside his spinal cord resulted in the loss of movement in his legs. Growing up in Sweden in the 1970s, he entered a world with few accommodations for children with disabilities—but also a fa...

The final chapter of Darren Appleton’s Legends of the Cue interview is a powerful story of versatility, loss, survival and renewed purpose. Part 5 begins with Darren’s late-career fascination with one-pocket, a game he learned after moving to the United States and studying experienced players whose knowledge of movement and strategy could overcome declining shot-making ability. The conversation moves to Appleton’s 2017 induction into the Billiard Congress of America Hall of Fame and the perso...

What does it take to become a world champion across multiple cue sports disciplines? In Part 4 of Darren Appleton’s Legends of the Cue interview, the BCA Hall of Famer revisits the extraordinary championship run that established him as one of the greatest all-around pool players of the modern era. The story begins with Appleton’s breakthrough at the inaugural 2008 WPA World 10-Ball Championship in the Philippines. He explains how winning his first world title—and a $100,000 first prize—lifted...

Few players have embodied the emotion of the Mosconi Cup like Darren Appleton. In Part 3 of his Legends of the Cue interview, the European pool icon goes inside the team room, the arena and the pressure cooker that transformed the annual USA-versus-Europe contest into one of cue sports’ greatest spectacles. Appleton reflects on joining Team Europe in 2009 and bringing a more vocal, fiery presence to a group traditionally known for quiet professionalism. He explains why assembling the highest-...

Darren Appleton’s rise was anything but gradual. In Part 2 of this Legends of the Cue interview, “Dynamite” recalls winning the first professional tournament he entered, developing one of pool’s most admired cue deliveries and making the career-defining decision to leave English 8-ball behind for American pool. Appleton explains why his compact stroke, timing and cue-ball control were developed through observation rather than formal coaching. He remembers studying Jimmy White, Ronnie O’Sulliv...

Before Darren “Dynamite” Appleton became a multiple world champion and BCA Hall of Famer, he was a fiercely competitive kid growing up on a council estate in Pontefract, West Yorkshire. In Part 1 of this five-part Legends of the Cue interview, Appleton takes Mike Gonzalez, Allison Fisher and Mark Wilson back to the beginning of a remarkable cue sports journey. Darren explains how a childhood shaped by working-class values, football, boxing and family competition forged the mentality that late...

The sixth and final part of our Legends of the Cue interview with Alan “Angles” McManus looks forward as much as it looks back. After tracing Alan’s journey from Glasgow schoolboy to Masters champion, Crucible semi-finalist, commentator, and podcaster, this closing episode turns to the future of snooker, the growth of cue sports, and the enduring connection between snooker and pool. Alan shares his views on the modern professional game, the extraordinary standard of today’s players, and the i...

In Part 5 of our Legends of the Cue conversation with Alan McManus, we follow his transition from the professional arena to the commentary box, the television studio, and the world of podcasting. After more than three decades as a professional snooker player, Alan retired in 2021 and moved more fully into broadcasting. In this episode, he reflects on how the balance gradually shifted from competing to commentating, what he learned from being around television production, and why explaining th...

Part 4 of our Alan McManus series brings us to the championship heart of his career: the 1994 Masters at Wembley, the famous final against Stephen Hendry, and the long arc of a professional snooker life lived at the highest level. Alan takes Mike Gonzalez, Allison Fisher, and Mark Wilson inside one of the most memorable wins of his career: defeating Hendry 9–8 in the Masters final. He reflects on what finals felt like, why some players seemed naturally built for them, and how different the at...

Part 3 of our Legends of the Cue series with Alan “Angles” McManus explores the influences, techniques, rivalries, and self-awareness that helped define his rise in professional snooker. Alan looks back on Steve Davis as the model player of his youth: the standard-bearer whose technique, discipline, and professionalism changed what young snooker players believed was possible. As a boy, Alan even staged imaginary tournaments at home, pretending to be Davis, Jimmy White, and other stars while s...

In Part 2 of our Legends of the Cue interview with Alan McManus, the conversation moves from Glasgow snooker halls to New York pool rooms, from schoolboy promise to professional ambition, and from natural ability to the hard-earned craft of safety play. Alan begins with a fascinating cue-sports crossover discussion, asking Allison Fisher about the open bridge, snooker technique, and how her move to American pool may have influenced the way pool players approached fundamentals. That opens the ...

In Part 1 of our extended Legends of the Cue conversation with Scottish snooker great Alan “Angles” McManus, we begin where every cue-sports life story should begin: at the first table, with the first cue, and with the first signs that something special might be happening. Alan joins Mike Gonzalez, Mark Wilson, and Allison Fisher for a warm and thoughtful opening chapter that traces his early years in Glasgow, his first memories of cue sports, and the childhood moments that helped shape one o...

The final chapter of Jorgen Sandman’s Legends of the Cue interview brings together the personal and the historic: a lifetime of service to pool, a near-death experience, a renewed commitment to the WPA, and a simple answer to how he wants to be remembered—“as another pool player, with a dream.” Jorgen continues the Olympic conversation by explaining why pool may deserve the first true chance if billiards sports are admitted to the Games. He points to pool’s global reach, the possibility of ch...

Can pool become an Olympic sport? In this fifth episode of Legends of the Cue, Jorgen Sandman offers one of the clearest explanations you will hear of where billiards sports stand in the Olympic movement, what still has to happen, and why the dream remains alive. The episode begins with the continental structure of the WPA and why organizations like the EPBF, Asian federations, BCA, African associations, and Pan-American bodies became essential to pool’s global survival. Jorgen explains why t...

Pool fans know eight-ball, nine-ball, ten-ball, and straight pool. But behind the games themselves is a complex world of federations, Olympic recognition, acronyms, politics, and diplomacy. In this fourth episode of Legends of the Cue, Jorgen Sandman becomes the ideal guide through the “alphabet soup” of international cue sports governance. Jorgen explains how carom, snooker, and pool first came together under one umbrella, eventually forming the World Confederation of Billiards Sports, or WC...

In this powerful third episode of Legends of the Cue, Jorgen Sandman pulls back the curtain on the creation of the World Pool-Billiard Association, the importance of American participation, and the youth development systems that helped Europe and Asia catch up to—and eventually surpass—the United States in world pool. Jorgen recounts the late-1980s conversations that led European leaders to look beyond their own borders and imagine a true global structure for pool. He explains why the WPA could...

Before Jorgen Sandman became one of the most influential administrators in world pool, he was first a student, teacher, pool room operator, promoter, and believer in the power of simply getting started. In this second episode of Legends of the Cue, Jorgen explains how “learning by doing” became the motto that guided his journey from young instructor to international leader in billiards sports. The conversation begins with the games that shaped Swedish pool in its early years, especially straigh...

Jorgen Sandman’s extraordinary life in cue sports begins far from the bright lights of world championships and Olympic committees. In this opening episode of Legends of the Cue, Jorgen takes us back to Sundsvall, Sweden, where a childhood shaped by ice hockey, discipline, outdoor play, and multi-sport development laid the foundation for a lifetime in pool, billiards, coaching, and sports leadership. Jorgen recalls learning to skate before he could walk, being taught fundamentals before being al...

In the final chapter of our conversation on Legends of the Cue, Jeanette “The Black Widow” Lee reflects on legacy, recognition, and what it all means after a life spent chasing excellence in pool. This episode shifts from the climb to the view from the top, as Jeanette shares her reaction to receiving the sport’s highest honors: induction into the WPBA and the Billiard Congress of America Halls of Fame. She talks about what that moment meant to her personally, how she viewed the road that got h...