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Image: Japan Amateur Pocket Billiard Association (JAPA)
August 14 and 15, 2026. Kannai, Yokohama.
Introducing the players to watch at SANSIAS presents Yokohama 14-1 Summit.
I asked why he keeps playing 14.1.
He smiled a little as he answered.
“Because it shows me exactly how bad I am.”
That, from a man who has taken best amateur at the All Japan 14.1 Championship three times.
The 43rd, the 50th, the 51st: best amateur at the All Japan 14.1 Championship.
Champion of the 6th Kansai 14.1.
On the numbers alone, he has stood at the top of this game for years.
The stronger you get, the more there is to work on.
Perhaps twenty-five years taught him that.
High run: 112.
What he still loves most, he says, is the moment he clears the table just as he pictured it.
There was a night when the view he had drawn in his head went on across the table, unchanged, for 112 balls.
It makes him want to chase that feeling again.
The match he named as the one that stays with him was against Okumura-san.
The match in which he first took best amateur.
Perhaps what remains is less the details of the game than how he felt that night.
Where it gets hard: the break.
What matters most in practice: repeatability.
Ask about his strength, and one word comes back: “Experience.”
Twenty-five years of words, short and heavy.
I asked how he felt going into this Summit.
“I want to enjoy it, without getting hung up on winning or losing.”
If he is setting out to enjoy it, it will surely be a good match.
And a word for anyone who wants to take up 14.1.
“There’s nothing to lose by playing it.”
From someone who has kept at it for twenty-five years, that one line weighed far more than I had expected.
Kunihiko Nakazawa
Affiliation: Billiard UNICORN | Class: A
Major results: best amateur, All Japan 14.1 Championship (43rd, 50th, 51st) / champion, 6th Kansai 14.1
Years playing 14.1: about 25 | High run: 112
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