Vietnamese Carom Billiards: When the Input Data Is Empty, How Does Strategy Speak?

I began my sports journalism career at 19 and have spent 43 years observing the game. I was at the 2026 World Cup, sat in Liverpool's analysis room in the summer of 2026, and witnessed several tactical revolutions. But one image stays with me more than any final: a nine-part analysis marked N/A – insufficient information, cannot assess. No player, no tournament, no number. Some might call it a technical error. I see it as a mirror of a part of Vietnamese sports: we have talent and passion, but we lack the data needed to turn talent into a system. The analysis I received was not about three-cushion carom. Yet it reminded me of exactly that sport. I do not watch a match from the stands. I count the space between positions. In football, I count the gap between defender and midfielder. In carom billiards, I look at the space between the three balls on the table. A shot does not begin when the cue touches the cue ball. It begins when the player kneels, chooses a curve, and calculates the third cushion point. That is a spatial calculation. The summer with the German coach taught me that pressing is not anger; it is arithmetic. Three-cushion billiards is the same. The masse is not recklessness; it is an equation with a known answer. But to solve the equation, you need data. In football, I built a coding system for six pressing triggers from 14 Liverpool matches. I watched replays and counted 312 turnovers in the opponent's final third. Each trigger was linked to a specific space. The result was a reproducible map. In Vietnamese carom billiards, when a player makes a beautiful three-cushion shot, we usually praise it by feeling. Few ask: why did that shot have to hit the cushion at point 42 instead of point 48? Why did the cue ball have to stop in that exact box? Without answers, a beautiful shot is just a lucky moment repeated by muscle memory. This is where I want to talk about the 50 system. To outsiders, it sounds dry. To me, it is the multiplication table of three-cushion billiards. Masters divide the long cushion into 50 units and the short cushion into 25 units, then use formulas to calculate angles. European players systematized this long ago. They practice with simulation software, recording every cue-ball path and every cushion friction factor. When they enter a match, they bring not only talent but a library of verified shots. That is why players like Dick Jaspers, Marco Zanetti, and Semih Saygıner stay at the top for decades. They are not better than Vietnamese players at feeling the ball. They are better at reproducing exactly what they have done. Russia 2026 taught me that data does not win a match; it wins before kick-off. When Belgium beat Brazil 2-1, people talked about Kevin De Bruyne's brilliance. But before the match, we had analyzed that he would drop deep as a false six to break Brazil's press. That was not a feeling; it was the result of comparing Brazil's positional data from four previous matches. The same can be done in billiards. If we film and code every shot a player takes in a season, we will know where he usually fails. We will know which opening angle pushes him toward defense instead of attack. We will know how his cue speed changes in the 40th minute. Without data, those answers remain guesses. Based on my experience watching matches, I have learned that great players not only play well; they manage error very well. A winning three-cushion shot can be repeated if the player knows the coordinates of the cue ball. Without measurement, every good shot is a search. The problem of Vietnamese carom billiards is not talent. Trần Quyết Chiến proved that a Vietnamese player can stand on top of the world. Nguyễn Đức Anh Chiến showed the depth of the next generation. Bao Phương Vinh shows how fast young players can learn. But looking at the ecosystem, we still lack a data infrastructure. Players still train the traditional way: the coach remembers, the student watches, then each one learns by himself. On the international stage, they compete against opponents with video analysts and dedicated cameras. They can still win with instinct, but consistency cannot be built on instinct alone. The counter-intuitive point is that we should not start by buying expensive equipment. Start with a notebook and a camera. Code every shot in every national team match. Build a small but clean data set before dreaming about artificial intelligence. The biggest football analysis systems also began with someone manually counting actions. I did that for seven months with Liverpool. The result was a private coding system with six pressing triggers. It did not need expensive software. It needed discipline. In billiards, that discipline is still a gap. When the pitch goes silent, I can hear the crack of a football system that refuses to change. In billiards, I hear cushions collide, but I rarely hear numbers falling onto paper. A player can play 100 three-cushion shots every day for 10 years. Without recording, he is just repeating shots by muscle memory. If he records everything, he will know he is strong in only 70 of them. He will know the other 30 are weaknesses to train. That is the advantage of turning experience into data. Experience is a story told again. Data is a story that can be verified. I once mocked data analysis in sport. At twenty, I thought football only needed a ball and passion. At 59, I still believe what I mocked at twenty: football is a game of a single moment. But I understand that a moment is not born by chance. It is prepared by hundreds of hours, thousands of repetitions, and countless invisible calculations. Carom billiards is the same. The deciding shot at the end of a match is not sudden inspiration. It is the result of a process that, if recorded, can teach others. Look at the execution blind spot. Many Vietnamese billiards tournaments are still organized for speed, with no time for analysis. The national team has few data specialists. Players find sponsors, hire helpers, and protect their secrets alone. In that context, a beautiful shot is celebrated as an event instead of being fed into a system for comparison. We do not lack people. We lack a layer of billiards engineers, people who sit outside the match to count, measure, and model. I am not saying feeling can be replaced. I am saying feeling and data need to live side by side. The best player in the world still needs feeling for a position never seen before. But that happens very rarely, because he has already seen almost every situation through data. That is why he stays calm under pressure. He does not guess. He remembers. In major tournaments, a mental edge comes from knowing you have prepared enough. Imagine a Vietnamese player in a world final facing an opponent with a full analysis team. Without data, he only has memories of five previous meetings. If we build a system that films international matches, he will know how his opponent defends from certain angles. He will know what kind of cue action disturbs his focus. That is a decisive advantage. An empty analysis, in a way, is a gift. It forces us to ask: without input data, are we analyzing or just telling stories? In Vietnam, we have many beautiful stories about carom billiards. But beautiful stories do not automatically make a player consistent at world level. Consistency comes from system. The lesson from the German coach's summer is still valid. Pressing is arithmetic. A three-cushion shot is also arithmetic. No calculation works without numbers. When I watch Trần Quyết Chiến or Nguyễn Đức Anh Chiến play, I do not see artisans. I see engineers controlling space on the table. They are confident not because they believe in luck, but because they have calculated. Every time they bend down, they are solving a maze with numbers. For me, the most important thing now is not immediate reform of tournament structures. It is building the habit of recording data. Every match, domestic or international, needs to be filmed. Every shot needs to be linked to a player, a coordinate, a result. After one season, we will have enough information to change coaching. No player will fade without explanation. Data will show where, when, and against which style he weakens. That is what a traditional notebook cannot do. I once wrote a 5,000-word analysis of the 2026 World Cup final after watching replays many times. I noticed Lionel Messi changed his role in extra time. That was not an emotional comment. It came from counting 47 minutes of touches in midfield and nine passes into the final third. Without notes, I could only say: Messi played well tonight. That sentence is useless to a professional. Billiards needs the same kind of analysis. Instead of saying: he played solidly, we should say: he missed only 3 of 15 high-difficulty shots. But to say that, we must count. One more thing: data does not remove sport's beauty. It clarifies beauty. When I know a three-cushion shot can only win through one unique curve, I admire the player more for performing it under pressure. Without data, I only see a pretty shot; I do not know how hard it was. Data raises emotion to a deeper level of understanding. Finally, I return to that empty analysis. It may be an input error, but it is also a perfect metaphor. If we let billiards matches pass without collecting data, we will keep receiving N/A analyses. We will talk about talent, destiny, and aura, but we will not be able to speak about tactics with precision. Meanwhile, the world has moved far ahead. I am not afraid of being called conservative. At 59, I still believe in what I mocked at twenty: football is a game of a single moment. Billiards is too. A magical moment can come from a calculation prepared long in advance. If we refuse to prepare, we can only wait for luck. And luck, in elite sport, is a dangerous word. It hides laziness. It turns missing data into fate. Build data before speaking of tactics. Record before explaining. Count before praising. That is the only way Vietnamese carom billiards can have not only talented champions but also a system that produces champions deliberately. When I put my cue down and leave the table, I always ask: what space between two positions created that result? If everyone in Vietnamese billiards asks that question, I believe we will not wait long for a new generation. They will not just hit balls. They will rewrite the rules. But that will only happen when we stop worshipping feeling and start respecting numbers.