The World Pool League was a nine ball pool

Nine Ball

Nine-ball is a contemporary form of pool , with historical beginnings rooted in the United States and traceable to the 1920s...

 tournament promoted by Matchroom Sport

Matchroom Sport

Matchroom Sport is a sport event promotions company founded by the English entrepreneur Barry Hearn. It first came to attention in the sports of snooker and boxing and is also involved in pool, bowling, golf , fishing, darts and poker...

 and PartyGaming

PartyGaming

bwin.Party Digital Entertainment Plc is an online gambling company, formed by the March 2011 merger of PartyGaming plc and bwin. The world's largest publicly traded online gambling firm, it is best known for its online poker room PartyPoker.com and its sports betting brand Bwin. It is...

, and sanctioned by the World Pool-Billiard Association

World Pool-Billiard Association

The World Pool-Billiard Association is the international governing body for pocket billiards . The group was formed in 1987, and was initially headed by a provisional board of directors consisting of representatives from Japan, the United States, Sweden, and Germany...

 (WPA). All of the events were held in Warsaw

Warsaw

Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...

, Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

, annually from 1999 to 2006. Six notable players were selected to participate in each event, which lasted for three days. Despite its name, the WPA was simply an invitational tournament, not a league

Sports league

League is a term commonly used to describe a group of sports teams or individual athletes that compete against each other in a specific sport. At its simplest, it may be a local group of amateur athletes who form teams among themselves and compete on weekends; at its most complex, it can be an...

 in the usual sporting senses. The victor in the final event was Dennis Orcollo of the Philippines

Philippines

The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...

, 8–5 over Niels Feijen

Niels Feijen

Niels Feijen is a professional pool player, from the Hague, Netherlands. His nickname is "the Terminator".In 2001, Feijen reached the finals of a nine-ball tournament in Tokyo, Japan. The event had a field of more than 700 players and offered the largest prize money at that time. However, he lost...

 of the Netherlands

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

, for a US$

United States dollar

The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....

20,000 first-place prize.

Round robin stage

The players were arranged such that each on the others once, in round-robin

Round-robin tournament

A round-robin tournament is a competition "in which each contestant meets all other contestants in turn".-Terminology:...

 fashion. Unlike most matches in the sport where a player has to score a required number of racks to win, players in this round play in an assigned number of racks (for example: 10 racks or 12 racks). If a player won more racks than those remaining in the match, 2 points were earned. If the match ended with two players in the same score, then both settled for a point each. The leading 4 players in the field proceeded to the semi-finals.

Semi-finals and final

The semi-finals were single-elimination (knock-out)

Single-elimination tournament

A single-elimination tournament, also called a knockout, cup or sudden death tournament, is a type of elimination tournament where the loser of each match or bracket is immediately eliminated from winning the championship or first prize in the event...

. The final was played as a (such as race-to-nine or race-to-eight).

Winners

Year:	1st place:		2nd place:
1998	Jim Rempe Jim Rempe James Rempe is an American professional pocket billiards player, and was inducted into the Billiard Congress of America's Hall of Fame in 2002.-Career:...	United States	Fabio Petroni	Italy
1999	Jim Rempe Jim Rempe James Rempe is an American professional pocket billiards player, and was inducted into the Billiard Congress of America's Hall of Fame in 2002.-Career:...	United States	Efren Reyes Efren Reyes Efren Manalang Reyes is a Filipino professional pool player and a two-time world champion. Reyes is considered by many to be the greatest all-around pool player in the history of the game. He is affectionately nicknamed "Bata" and "the Magician".-Early life:Reyes was born in Pampanga in 1954...	Philippines
2000	Steve Knight	United Kingdom	Francisco Bustamante Francisco Bustamante Francisco Bustamante is a Filipino professional pocket billiards player from Tarlac, and the 2010 World Nine-ball Champion., nicknamed "Django", after the lead character of the film of the same name, and sometimes also called "Bustie", especially in the United States.-Early life:Bustamante is the...	Philippines
2001	Efren Reyes Efren Reyes Efren Manalang Reyes is a Filipino professional pool player and a two-time world champion. Reyes is considered by many to be the greatest all-around pool player in the history of the game. He is affectionately nicknamed "Bata" and "the Magician".-Early life:Reyes was born in Pampanga in 1954...	Philippines	Steve Davis Steve Davis Steve Davis, OBE is an English professional snooker player. He has won more professional titles in the sport than any other player, including six World Championships during the 1980s, when he was the world number one for seven years and became the sport's first millionaire...	United Kingdom
2002	Efren Reyes Efren Reyes Efren Manalang Reyes is a Filipino professional pool player and a two-time world champion. Reyes is considered by many to be the greatest all-around pool player in the history of the game. He is affectionately nicknamed "Bata" and "the Magician".-Early life:Reyes was born in Pampanga in 1954...	Philippines	Earl Strickland Earl Strickland Earl "The Pearl" Strickland is an American professional pool player and was inducted into the Billiard Congress of America's Hall of Fame in 2006...	United States
2003	Rodney Morris Rodney Morris Rodney Morris is a professional pool player of Hawaiian descent. He currently resides in Spring Hill, Florida....	United States	Thorsten Hohmann	Germany
2004	Francisco Bustamante Francisco Bustamante Francisco Bustamante is a Filipino professional pocket billiards player from Tarlac, and the 2010 World Nine-ball Champion., nicknamed "Django", after the lead character of the film of the same name, and sometimes also called "Bustie", especially in the United States.-Early life:Bustamante is the...	Philippines	Alex Pagulayan Alex Pagulayan Alejandro Salvador Pagulayan, is a Filipino Canadian professional pool and snooker player. His nicknames are "the Lion" and "the Killer Pixie". He was born in Cabagan, Isabela, Philippines and was raised in Toronto, Ontario, Canada...	Canada
2005	Thorsten Hohmann	Germany	Francisco Bustamante Francisco Bustamante Francisco Bustamante is a Filipino professional pocket billiards player from Tarlac, and the 2010 World Nine-ball Champion., nicknamed "Django", after the lead character of the film of the same name, and sometimes also called "Bustie", especially in the United States.-Early life:Bustamante is the...	Philippines
2006	Dennis Orcollo	Philippines	Niels Feijen Niels Feijen Niels Feijen is a professional pool player, from the Hague, Netherlands. His nickname is "the Terminator".In 2001, Feijen reached the finals of a nine-ball tournament in Tokyo, Japan. The event had a field of more than 700 players and offered the largest prize money at that time. However, he lost...	Netherlands