The U.S. Open Pool Championship, America's longest-running major nine-ball tournament, is trading its longtime Atlantic City casino home for a convention center in Frisco this week, and one of the sport's top-ranked players says the move already looks like the right call. Fedor Gorst, the Russian-born U.S. citizen ranked No. 3 on the World Nineball Tour, said Texas simply offered something New Jersey didn't: its people.
A Top Player's Case for Texas
Gorst, the top-ranked American player on the World Nineball Tour, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that Texas held more appeal than the tournament's previous home largely because of its hospitality, and he predicted the Frisco audience and atmosphere would be larger and better than what Atlantic City delivered. That's a notable endorsement from a player who made history in 2024 as the first to win the World Pool Masters, World Pool Championship, and U.S. Open in the same year — and who came into this year's event as the reigning runner-up, having lost the 2025 U.S. Open final to Aloysius Yapp, per the same report.
The tournament had been held at Harrah's Resort in Atlantic City for five consecutive years, from 2021 through 2025, before organizers relocated it to the Embassy Suites by Hilton Frisco Hotel & Convention Center at 7600 John Q. Hammons Drive. Competition runs from Tuesday, August 25, through Sunday, August 30, with play starting at 11 a.m. on opening day and roughly 30 tables set up in the arena that first day, according to the Star-Telegram's reporting.
Doubled Ticket Sales and a Bigger Purse
Early signs point to the move paying off: ticket sales for the Frisco event have reportedly doubled returns from the previous final in Atlantic City, the Star-Telegram reports. The tournament also arrives with its richest purse yet — a $500,000 prize pool that includes a $100,000 grand prize for the champion, which represents the highest payout structure in World Nineball Tour Open history, according to APA Billiards Digest. Matchroom raised the total purse from $300,000 to $500,000 beginning with the 2025 event, before the venue switch.
The World Nineball Tour has said Texas's deep-rooted pool culture, especially at the amateur level, helped attract the U.S. Open to the state in the first place, and it hopes the event's success will lead to more tour stops there down the road. Emily Frazer, who oversees the World Nineball Tour as CEO of Matchroom Multisport, said in February that if the Frisco staging proves successful, the organization hopes to establish long-term roots in North Texas and eventually launch additional events such as a Texas Open or Frisco Open, according to Local Profile.
Why Frisco Wanted the Tournament
The pursuit wasn't one-sided. Frisco has branded itself Sports City USA, and the numbers back it up: the city's sports tourism economy generated a record $96.6 million in total economic impact and an all-time high $13.1 million in hotel occupancy tax revenue during fiscal year 2024, per Local Profile's reporting, with the city hosting 259 athletic events and group conventions that year. Sports Business Journal also named Frisco one of its Ones to Watch in its 2024 Best Sports Business Cities evaluation, citing the city's multi-venue infrastructure and its status as home to seven professional sports franchises, including the Dallas Cowboys, FC Dallas, and Dallas Stars, according to the Frisco Economic Development Corporation.
The broadcast footprint has also expanded. In July, Matchroom Pool finalized a broadcasting agreement with ESPN to stream both the 2026 U.S. Open Pool Championship and the 2026 Mosconi Cup live on ESPN+ in the United States, per the World Nineball Tour, bringing major cue sports back to a mainstream American digital platform.
A 256-Player Field With Global Reach
The event will field 256 players competing through double-elimination rounds before narrowing to a 64-player single-elimination bracket, per Local Profile's reporting. The U.S. Open routinely draws competitors from more than 50 countries, and the 2025 field included 94 American players alongside top international stars, the World Nineball Tour has noted. The tournament is open to male, female, and wheelchair cue athletes who register, and organizers are structuring the Frisco stop to let fans walk around, socialize, drink beer, and bring children — a family-friendly format the Star-Telegram highlighted as a departure from the resort-casino setting in Atlantic City. Ahead of competition, organizers also scheduled an official fan opening ceremony for Monday, August 24, at Rollertown Beerworks in Frisco, giving spectators a chance to meet top international players before matches begin, according to an Eventbrite listing for the event.
Fifty Years of Nine-Ball Tradition
The U.S. Open traces back to 1976, when it began with just 16 players at Q-Master Billiards in Norfolk, Virginia. It's regarded as America's longest-running major nine-ball tournament, and its champion traditionally receives a green blazer along with free lifetime tournament entry, according to Pearson Cues. Matchroom took over operations of the championship in 2018. In nine-ball, players must strike the lowest-numbered ball on the table first or incur a foul, though the nine ball itself can be legally sunk to win a rack without necessarily going in numeric order — a wrinkle that keeps matches tense down to the final shot, and one reason the format has become a global spectator draw compared to older 15-ball games.
Gorst's own path to the top began far from Texas. He started out playing Russian pyramid billiards, a discipline that uses a larger table, smaller pockets, and bigger balls than the nine-ball format now bringing him to Frisco. He'll share the spotlight with other elite names in the sport, including Niels Feijen, the 2014 WPA World Nine-Ball Champion and five-time European Straight Pool Championship winner who was inducted into the Billiard Congress of America Hall of Fame in 2023.
