Pankaj Advani

Pankaj Arjan Advani (born 24 July 1985) is an Indian billiards and professional snooker player.

He is a 27-time International Billiards and Snooker Federation (IBSF) world champion.

He has won 18 billiards world titles, the IBSF World Billiards Championship on 17 occasions and the World Team Billiards Championship once.

In snooker, he won the IBSF World Snooker Championship three times, IBSF World six-red championship twice and the IBSF World Team Cup and IBSF World Team Championship one time each.

He has the record number of IBSF world championships.

Pankaj Advani was born on 24 July 1985 to a Sindhi family in Pune, India.

Advani spent his initial years in Kuwait before moving to Bangalore, India.

He received his education at the Frank Anthony Public School, Bangalore and completed his bachelor's degree in Commerce from Sri Bhagawan Mahaveer Jain College.

He received training in snooker from former national Snooker champion Arvind Savur.

At the age of 10 his acumen for snooker came to the notice of Arvind Savur after being introduced to the sport by his elder brother Dr. Shree Advani, a noted Sport & Performance Psychologist.

He won his first ever title at the age of 11 and went on to set several records at the state and national levels.

Advani made his international competitive debut in 1999 at the World Billiards Championship in England.

In the year 2000 he won his first Indian Junior Billiards Championship title and then went on to win it again in 2001 and 2003.

In 2003 he not only won the Indian Junior Snooker and Billiards Championship, he also won the senior snooker champions which made him the youngest National Snooker champion at age 17.

After World Snooker Champion title win in 2003, he won the IBSF World Billiards Championship in 2005 at Qawra, Malta, where he became the first to achieve a "Grand Double" by winning both the time and point formats, making him the first cueist to achieve that feat.

Pankaj Advani, on international competitive debut in the discipline, won the IBSF World Snooker Championship (i.e. the World Amateur Snooker Championship) on 25 October 2003 in Jiangmen, China.

He was 18 years old, and became the youngest Indian to win the title, his first world title.

In recognition of his achievements, the Government of India has bestowed several awards upon Advani: the Arjuna Award in 2004, Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna in 2006, Padma Shri in 2009 and Padma Bhushan in 2018.

Advani has the distinction of winning all five national, regional, and world billiards tournaments in a single season, a feat he achieved by winning the Indian Junior National Championship and Senior National Championship, the Asian Billiards Championship, and both the World Billiards Championship (point format) and World Billiards Championship (time format) in 2005.

He has won the "Grand Double" on three occasions, 2008 in Bangalore, 2014 in England and 2018 in Myanmar.

He is the only Indian to have won the amateur world title in both snooker and billiards.

He became a snooker professional in 2012/2013.

In April 2012, Advani won the Asian Billiards Championship in Goa, India to become the first player to win 5 Asian Billiards Champion titles.

It was announced in May that Advani had accepted the Indian wildcard place on the main snooker tour for the 2012–13 season.

In October 2012, in Leeds, England, Advani won his seventh (counting professional and amateur) World Billiards Championship title, eighth world title overall, beating defending and nine-time WPBSA World Billiards Champion Mike Russell again, in the timed division final (Advani did not make it to the points division final).

On 14 August 2014, Advani helped win the first ever World Team Billiards Championship held in Glasgow, Scotland, along with Rupesh Shah, Devendra Joshi and Ashok Shandilya.

When he was 28-years-old, at the IBSF World 6-Red World Snooker Championship in Sharm-El-Sheik, Egypt, a feat he repeated in August 2015 after he successfully defended the title in Karachi, Pakistan.

As a new player on the tour, Advani would need to win four matches to reach the main stage of the ranking events.

He did this in just his fourth attempt, when qualifying for the International Championship.

He defeated Craig Steadman 6–1, six-time world champion Steve Davis 6–5 (after being 1–4 down), Alan McManus 6–3 and Michael Holt 6–4 to reach the venue stage for the first time.

He made four s during qualification, the most of any player.

Advani was to play a wildcard match once at the tournament in Chengdu, China, to reach the last 32, however he decided to withdraw from the tournament to take part in the World Billiards Championship, which he went on to win.

He also reached the semi-finals of the minor ranking European Tour Event 1, beating four-time world champion John Higgins 4–1 along the way.

Advani lost to Mark Selby 2–4.

On 2 February 2017, Pankaj Advani won his 29th National Championship Title at the PYC Hindu Gymkhana in Pune, India.

This gave him a 39 match-winning streak.

Overall, as of 2017 Advani had won 60 titles: 19 world titles; 8 Asian titles; 2 Asian Games titles; 1 Australian Open title and 30 national titles.

In 2018, Advani won his 7th Asian Billiards Title in Myanmar making him the maximum holder of the Asian Title.

On March 11, 2020, won the 6 reds national snooker championship in Ahmedabad taking his total tally of national champions to 34.

(11 junior and 23 senior).