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The Mosconi Cup is an annual nine-ball pool tournament contested between teams representing Europe and the USA since 1994.

The trophy is named after American player Willie Mosconi. It is based on the format of the Ryder Cup in golf.[1] The 15th edition of the event took place at the Hilton Hotel, St Julian's, Malta, Thursday 11 to Sunday 14 December 2008, and was sponsored by PartyCasino.com.[1]

Famous players

The tournament has featured some of the most famous players in the sport, including Earl Strickland, Johnny Archer, Jimmy White, Alex Higgins, Ronnie O'Sullivan, and Steve Davis.

In its earliest days, the Mosconi Cup was created by Sky Sports and Matchroom Sport as an exhibition event to increase public awareness of pool in the UK. As a result, players on both teams were generally picked for their ability to entertain the crowd. This is why early European teams featured a high percentage of famous snooker players, in order to draw snooker fans to the event.

In the first year of competition some of the WPBA's top players played alongside the men in their respective teams. These included Franziska Stark (Germany), Allison Fisher (England), Jeanette Lee (US) and Vivian Villarreal (US).

As time progressed, the event evolved from its exhibition nature into a much more serious and professional tournament, and earning a place in the event has acquired a great deal of prestige. Of the snooker players, only Steve Davis remained into the event's more serious era, bowing out when the event began to clash with snooker's UK Championship. From this point, all players had to earn an invitation through their performances at other events, although the 2007 event saw snooker favourite Tony Drago earn a place on merit by virtue of his performance on the European pool tour, winning the tournament's Most Valuable Player award for his unbeaten run in the singles matches.

Most appearances

The players to have appeared in the Mosconi Cup:[2][3]

* 13 Ralf Souquet (Flag of Germany), Earl Strickland (Flag of the United States)
* 12 Johnny Archer (Flag of the United States), Mika Immonen (Flag of Finland)
* 11 Steve Davis (Flag of England)
* 9 Oliver Ortmann (Flag of Germany) (one of them as a non-playing captain)
* 7 Jeremy Jones (Flag of the United States)
* 6 Marcus Chamat (Flag of Sweden), Rodney Morris (Flag of the United States)
* 5 Corey Deuel (Flag of the United States), Niels Feijen (Flag of the Netherlands), Nick Varner (Flag of the United States) (twice as a non-playing captain), Charles Williams (Flag of the United States)
* 4 Steve Knight (Flag of England)
* 3 Kim Davenport (Flag of the United States) (one of them as a non-playing captain), Thomas Engert (Flag of Germany), Alex Lely (Flag of the Netherlands)(once as a non-playing captain), James Rempe (Flag of the United States), Nick van den Berg (Flag of the Netherlands)
* 2 Lou Butera (Flag of the United States), Shane Van Boening (Flag of the United States) , Michael Coltrain (Flag of the United States), Shannon Daulton (Flag of the United States), Tony Drago (Flag of Malta), Mike Gulyassy (Flag of the United States), Thorsten Hohmann (Flag of Germany), Robert Hunter (Flag of the United States), Mike Massey (Flag of the United States), Ronnie O'Sullivan (Flag of England), Daryl Peach (Flag of England), Reed Pierce (Flag of the United States), Tony Robles (Flag of the United States), Johan Ruijsink (Flag of the Netherlands) (twice as a non-playing captain), Tom Storm (Flag of Sweden), Dallas West (Flag of the United States), Jimmy White (Flag of England), Mark Wilson (Flag of the United States)
* 1 David Alcaide (Flag of Spain), Mike Davis (Flag of the United States), Tommy Donlon (Flag of Ireland), John DiToro (Flag of the United States), Vincent Facquet (Flag of France), Allison Fisher (Flag of England), Paul Gerni (Flag of the United States), Roger Griffis (Flag of the United States), Mark Gray (Flag of England), Danny Harriman (Flag of the United States), Alex Higgins (Flag of Northern Ireland), Allen Hopkins (Flag of the United States), Raj Hundal (Flag of England), Lee Kendall (Flag of England), Jeanette Lee (Flag of the United States), Imran Majid (Flag of England), Shawn Putnam (Flag of the United States), Fabio Petroni (Flag of Italy), Andy Richardson (Flag of England), John Schmidt (Flag of the United States), Franziska Stark (Flag of Germany), Konstantin Stepanov (Flag of Russia), Lee Tucker (Flag of England), Vivian Villarreal (Flag of the United States), C.J. Wiley (Flag of the United States)

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