Two years old, so far so good!

Hi! Let me tell you who I am, as you probably don't know already. My name is Thomas Stavang Pedersen, I live in Oslo, Norway, I'm 39 years old and I'm the CEO and founder of cuescore.com. I have been playing snooker and american pool since early 2000. I discovered the beauty of billiards after accidentally watching Ronnie O'Sullivan in a snooker match on TV at a hotel room in London. It was mesmerizing.
After returning home, I tried playing snooker, but a snooker table was hard to come by at the time (and playing it was not as easy as Ronnie would have me believe..), so american pool became my game.

My background is from the computer industry. I'm a computer engineer since 2000 and have been running an IT company since 2006. In 2011 I got more involved in the billiard scene in Norway, and started doing volunteer work for Oslo Billiard Club in my spare time. This led to being voted in as the chairman of the board in 2012, a position I still hold today. My involvement in billiards has grown rapidly since then. I've gathered experience as a fan, player, club leader, tournament director, trainer, referee, organizer, promoter, live-stream producer, commentator and mixed that with my skills as an engineer, data-architect, database expert, web-developer, server administrator, programmer, project manager and, most importantly; good listening skills! I could add lots more to this list as you learn a whole bunch of other stuff that comes with running a large venue with 30 tables, and running a company for many years.

CueScore is the result of years thinking about and planning how to create a system that solves the challenges I've met along the way. I'm lucky to have a great team with me at the office, and we are proud of what we have accomplished so far. The billiards community and cuescore users have become a part of our team. We feel like one of you, and we hope you feel like one of us!

I do not like to talk about myself though. I'm a "actions speak louder than words" kind of guy (it's taken 2 years before making this post). But my guys tell me that by telling you something about myself will make you better understand where CueScore comes from, and where it's going. I listen to them, because I am surrounded with great people that help make this site what it is, and I understand that our users might want to know more about who's behind the site. 

I will provide more information about the great team that is working on cuescore.com on a new "about us" page we are putting together, so stay tuned for more on that!

Tournament managers - our VIP's 

Most people would regard the players as the most important people in the billiards community, and that is true in a sense. There can be no game without the players. Still, our perspective is a little bit different.
We value the players of course, but to us, the organizers are the true heroes. The people that is always there, the heart of the local community, the ones that organize weekly or daily events without much (or any) financial gain, but loves the sport and will do anything to promote and/or see it thrive in the public eye. They usually spend a lot of time talking to players, planning events, get players signed up, make reports, create posters, handing out flyers, running tournaments, share links to events on social media and countless more efforts to get more people into the pool halls and in love with their sport. 

In Norwegian, there is a special word for these people, they are called a "ildsjel". Directly translated, it's "firesoul" (which is kind of beautiful, right?), and they are the driving force of everything that happens, the true enthusiasts.
Using Norway as an example, we have «firesouls» working on every level of organization, from local clubs to the board of the Norwegian Billiards Federation, and we know for a fact that these people also exist on higher level organizations. If you are part of a community, you should already know who your local firesoul is. Please appreciate them, as we do, for the important part they play in our sport.

If you are a firesoul (you know who you are) all of us here at CueScore salute you!
We hope that CueScore can help you in some way, and always remember that this program is created by people with idealistic motivations, and with the highest regard for you and our sport!

CueScore by the numbers

When we launched the site two years ago, we imported players and tournaments from the Norwegian Billiards Federation (for the season of 2015). In total, the player and tournament count put together were in the hundreds.
After that the player database have gotten somewhat bigger. As of today, we are counting over 30.000 player profiles. By the end of september more than 4000 tournaments have been held in over 30 different countries, which amount to more than 155.000 matches played, and all results are available in 11 different languages. This is a great achievement for our two year anniversary, and gives us extra motivation to continue improving the site. Thanks to all of our users. We would literally be nothing without you! :)

Introducing CueScore PRO

Our two year anniversary also marks the introduction of CueScore PRO. A product intented for users on a level above private/small tournaments, where planning and organizing events and sharing those with your tournament directors becomes more important. The PRO product gives you a unique URL into your own channel at cuescore.com, and on that page everything is about your events. You can create news articles (like the one you are reading now), create tournaments and personalize them, create team leagues, ranking lists, handicap lists, handle entry fees online, start using scoreboard for tablets and get a nice overview of all your events in a calendar.

We have lot's more planned for the PRO product, and we hope you'll like it! Level up with CueScore PRO here.

Here's some examples:

• Oslo Billiard Club (my club)
• The Norwegian Billiards Federation (NB)
• The Royal Dutch Billiards Federation (KNBB)
• World Pool Series (WPS) 
• Check out some more organizations here

Future plans

We still have lots of stuff planned for the future. We have a todo list that seems to have no end, and yet it keeps getting longer and longer. :)

If you have been in contact with us about anything, you are probably on it. If you haven't, get in touch, as we do not mind adding more. We frequently go through the list and rearrange the priority levels, so a good idea can get developed quickly even though the list is long.