Player: Francisco Sanchez Ruiz
Event: Premier League Pool
Location: Miami, Florida
Date: February 22, 2026



Matchroom's three-year-old Premier League Pool event is a unique stop on the professional tour. An invitational with 16 of the world’s top players, PLP is a five-day slog, with players enduring dozens of matches in a modified round-robin format. After all 16 players play one another once, the field is trimmed to 10. Those players all match up again to cut the field to six. Those players all match up once again until the top four performers are drawn into a traditional single-elimination semifinal and final bracket.

All this to say, by the time Francisco Sanchez Ruiz and Eklent Kaci lagged to start their race-to-7 semifinal, the two world-beaters had each survived 29 sets, with the Albanian winning 20 and the Spaniard 18. FSR quickly ran out to 2-0 lead, until he came to the table after a Kaci safety as shown in the diagram. Unable to see enough of the 4 ball along the right long rail to play a straightforward offensive shot, Sanchez Ruiz opted for an ingenious two-way shot.

Playing a carom-kick on the 4, he sent the cue into the sliver of the pink ball he could see, which headed up-table off the headrail and down toward the bottom right corner. With the 9 ball, a little less than a diamond from the corner pocket, the cue ball hit it nearly fully, sending the game-winning ball into the bottom of the pocket.

From there, Sanchez Ruiz coasted to a 7-5 victory in the semifinal. But 2026 Premier League Pool was the story of Duong Quoc Hoang. The Vietnamese star blasted his way to the top overall seed, winning 14 more racks than any other player. After a hill-hill win against Albert Januarta of Indonesia, 7-6, Hoang then breezed to the $25,000 title with a 7-4 win over FSR.

(Check out Accu-Stats' full library of great shots and amazing matches at www.accu-stats.com)