IN THE YEAR 2000, HE WON HIS FIRST INDIAN JUNIOR BILLIARDS CHAMPIONSHIP
JULY 24, 1985
ENGLISH, HINDI
BANGALORE
Pankaj Arjan Advani (born 24 July 1985) is an Indian billiards and snooker player. He is a 23-time World Champion and has achieved a hat-trick of hat-tricks in English billiards, holding the World, Asian, and Indian National Championship titles simultaneously, in five different years: 2005, 2008 , 2012, 2017 and recently in 2019.
He became a snooker professional in 2012, and his first season on the main tour was the 2012/2013 season. Advani won the 2014 IBSF World 6-Red Snooker Championship, on his debut in that discipline. As such he is currently the only player ever to win world titles in both the long and short formats of snooker (15-red standard, and 6-red) and both formats of English billiards (time and point). Advani is also India’s first world champion in 6-red snooker. Since 2014, Advani has focused solely on English billiards.
When most athletes are beginning to showcase their talent, at the age of 33 Pankaj Advani has already won all the championships the game has to offer many times over. The 23-time World Champion in cue sports won his first world title when he was just 18, and is the only person in the world to have ever won both the Billiards and Snooker World Championships in all formats.One of the youngest Indians to be honoured with the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award, Pankaj has also been conferred the Arjuna, the Padma Shri and most recently, the Padma Bhushan awards.
