I have several hobbies, but I want to share with you today my favorite hobby: POOL! 
First of all, let me start to burst some misperceptions about pool and billiards:
- Billiard is a SPORT. I know, it is not a physical endurance sport, but it for sure is a mental and unbelievably technical sport.
- You DON’T spin the 8-ball while racking for a pool game. These are “bar rules” as we call it, and you simply just don’t do that. To rack the right way, ideally EVERY ball should be touching the other one.
- The 8-ball DOESN’T need to go the opposite side of your last potted ball. This is the other famous bar rule, but you can literally choose any pocket.
- There are many billiard sports. Snooker, carom, American pool, Russian pyramid, Chinese 8-ball, 9-ball,…
Knowing this, we can safely go to the next part of this post. 
While I was on my road trip in USA last year, I couldn’t help myself playing some racks of pool in Griff’s in Las Vegas. This was my favorite part of Vegas to be honest. (don’t judge me!)
My passion for billiards started at the age of 6 where my dad introduced me to his hobby: Snooker. (my first name was picked by my dad, who’s favorite snooker player was Stephen Hendry)
A snooker table is HUGE, and at the age of 6 as a small dude, I had to stand on a box every time I wanted to play a shot - moving the box to play the next shot. 
I just absolutely loved it and I started to play more. Soon enough everyone in the snooker club was watching me and it became obvious that I was pretty talented in this. When I grew a bit bigger, I got rid of the box to stand on and started to practice and participating in youth tournaments which I was all winning.
At the age of 12, I was asked by a friend to play 8-Ball on a pool table which is much smaller. Slowly I started to get into pool more than snooker and I stopped snooker and started playing pool professionally.
I was practising 3 hours per day alone on my pool table at home, and played pretty much every possible national and international tournaments.
At the age of 16, I became European youth champion 
in Germany in a field of 100+ representatives from European countries. (picture can be found on top of the post)
This was supposed to be my breakthrough, but there is not so much money in the pool world as in other sports such as football or tennis, so there was a desperate need in sponsors to cover the expensive costs. In my country, Belgium, there is only an eye for football or tennis, and that is where all the money goes. Despite my achievements, talents, I did not find any sponsors.
At the age of 18, I had to be realistic and stopped playing pool professionally in order to focus on work/school.
Since then, I only played a few times pool per month, for fun.
However, the last year, I really feel like picking this up again, perhaps not professionally but I am practising now again to get to my old level! 
Me in Jan’ 2020, playing pool in Bal-enzo, my favorite billiards club in Belgium.
@HiroyukiTakisawa , thanks for the #monthlytopic series, I only just now have found out about it. This should get more exposure for sure! Such a great idea to motivate people to write monthly.
- Do you like to play billiards as well? What type of billiards do you play?
- What is your hobby? Write it in a post and make sure to @mention me!
Stay safe,
Stephen
Thank you for joining 
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Thank you for sharing this post with us.