By winning the title, Chien earned 80 points in the newest Union Mondiale de Billiard (UMB) to take his total to 318, moving him ranking up three places to enter the top three, behind the Netherlands’ Dick Jaspers (454 points) and Belgium’s Frédéric Caudron (440 points).

This is the highest world ranking achieved by a Vietnamese cueist and follows Chien’s impressive showing at 3-cushion competitions.

Last year, he won his first championship at the 2018 Three-Cushion Carom Billiards World Cup after beating the countryman Ngo Dinh Nai 40-39 in the final.

He continued his successful run at the 2019 Asian Carom Billiards Championship, beating Korea’s Cho Myung-woo 40-38 to earn his first regional trophy.

Vietnam has two other cueists in the top 15 in the UMB World Ranking – Nguyen Quoc Nguyen at number 11 (213 points) and Ngo Dinh Nai at number 13 (179 points).

Chien, Nguyen and Nai will compete in the Survival Masters held in Seoul, Korea from May 9 to 12. The champion will win prize money of $50,000 (22 percent tax not deducted).