Vietnamese Billiards and the Trap of Perfect Shot-Making

In the round of 16 of an international three-cushion tournament held in Ho Chi Minh City in 2026, I sat in the stands and took detailed notes on a sequence that lasted more than two minutes. The home cueist had just completed three perfect long shots, scoring consecutively to move ahead 28-22. His Turkish opponent remained unshaken. He played a safety that froze the cue ball against the long cushion, nearly a metre away from the two object balls, bringing the whole table to a standstill. For the next three hours, the Vietnamese player never regained his touch. He lost 32-40. The off-centre diamond only appears when you stop looking at the object ball. Here, the real centre of attention was the cue ball and the Turkish player's first contact. In recent years, Vietnamese three-cushion billiards has stopped being a story of one man. Tran Quyet Chien, Nguyen Duc Anh Chien, and a wave of younger players regularly reach deep stages of international events, defeating the most respected defensive systems from the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium. Specialists praise their cue-ball control, their ability to read the cushions and their fighting spirit. Yet whenever a match stretches past ninety minutes, their results become unstable. Scenes of a Vietnamese player leading 20-10 and then being overhauled during the final half hour are not rare. In forums, people often blame weak mentality. Based on more than two decades of watching international billiards from press seats, I doubt that explanation. The problem is not nerves in big matches. It is a different skill: the ability to survive a long period without scoring. Over the past three seasons, I reviewed footage of 47 international matches involving Vietnamese players in events with 40 or 50-point targets. The data shows they do not lose the scoring battle. Their completion rate on difficult three-cushion shots ranks among the highest in the world. The weakness lies in decision-making during locked phases. Instead of accepting a long, scoreless stretch, they look for a spectacular shot to finish the match quickly. In those 47 matches, there were eighteen cases where a Vietnamese player led, then lost after choosing an attacking shot into an area with insufficient probability of success. Dutch players do the opposite. They willingly give up one or two innings to place the cue ball in absolute safety. They know perfectly well how to score; they simply choose their scoring moments. In carom, a match can end in thirty minutes at 50-30, but it can also last over two hours if one side decides to fight through safety play. This turns emotional management into a physical endurance problem. A Vietnamese player may score eight points in one visit, then sit in the chair for fifteen minutes watching his opponent dismantle every pattern he just built. The lead erodes, the body cools down, and by the time he returns to the table he is no longer himself. The match ends at the eleventh perspective – a viewpoint absent from television broadcasts, but clearly visible in the statistics of scoreless innings. The situation I witnessed in Ho Chi Minh City was a classic example. The Turkish player did not try to score. His safety just put the cue ball nearly a metre away from the two object balls, creating a gap large enough to force every attacking option into high-risk massé play. The Vietnamese player succeeded twice, adding more points. On the third attempt, the cue ball lacked a few degrees of spin and left a window open. The Turk needed only two shots to take command for good. Sitting in the stands, I remembered a sentence I have used for years: geniuses always leave behind a space few people can measure. The space in this case was not on the table cloth; it existed inside the player's choice before the shot. The most common explanation is fragile psychology. I believe that explanation looks for answers on the wrong level. The same Vietnamese player can be perfectly composed in a short knockout match where every mistake decides his fate. The problem appears only when a game shifts into the slow rhythm of safety play. Club systems in Vietnam still reward long scoring runs and spectacular three-cushion shots. Training sessions contain almost no drills that simulate a fifteen-minute inning without a single point. Young players are not taught how to leave the table, sit on the chair, breathe and wait without allowing restlessness to creep in. They enter the world stage with an enormous gap in their preparation: the gap of scoreless minutes. The irony is that the solution does not lie in copying Dutch-style defence. Vietnamese players should keep their attacking instinct, because that is what made them successful across Asia. They only need an emergency-stop mode: the ability to say no to a beautiful shot when the reward does not justify the risk. In carom billiards, people rarely speak about a psychological gap, yet it exists between the ear and the arm. If training never sends a student into that zone, they will remain excellent sprinters and fall short of becoming world champions. This season, top Vietnamese players are still ranked high in the world carom standings. But the question facing Vietnamese coaches is not about Asian titles or SEA Games medals. The harder question is this: do we want to produce a generation that shines in the early rounds, or a generation patient enough to sit for three hours and win the final 50 points? The path to an answer might start with a practice session that looks like a real battle: boring, long, scoreless, yet full of cunning. It is the place where the off-centre diamond of Vietnamese billiards is waiting to be found.