The three- cushion world cup 1988/3 was the 3rd world cup tournament in the third year of the three- cushion world cup. It took place from November 25 to 27, 1988 in this discipline of carom billiards in Berlin .
As in the last World Cup tournament, the four best in the world rankings reached the semi-finals. There were two clear wins for Torbjörn Blomdahl and Jun'ichi Komori . In the final Blomdahl continued his impressive performance and won 3-0 sets against Komori. It was the first World Cup tournament that an actor won without losing a set. Raymond Ceulemans secured third place with a 3-0 win over Nobuaki Kobayashi . For the German participants, the tournament was an absolute disappointment. All participants were eliminated in the first round and were placed far below in the final ranking. The tournament at the Kempinski Hotel was an advertisement for the sport of billiards. Since the Berlinale was running at the same time , the celebrities gave each other a hand. One of the celebrities was the Israeli writer Ephraim Kishon . He is an avowed fan of carom billiards and has his own billiard room in his house in Israel. Hundreds of fans were constantly standing in front of the hotel.
The exact price money could not be determined from the documents. However, as in all BWA World Cup tournaments, it was at least 100,000 DM.
The tournament was played with 16 participants. The whole tournament was played in the KO system with three sets of 15 points each.
The first four of the world rankings (in this case Torbjörn Blomdahl, Jun'ichi Komori, Raymond Ceulemans and Nobuaki Kobayashi) were seeded for the second round.
If a set was completed at 15 points by player one, player two had no follow-up kick .
Final round
The tournament tree for the final round is listed below. Legend: SP / Pkte / Aufn / ED / HS
The three-cushion World Cup was organized by the founding association, the " Billiards Worldcup Association " (BWA) until 1998 . Disputes between the BWA and the world association Union Mondiale de Billard (UMB) led to parallel tournaments between 1994 and 1997. The UMB / BWA organized the tournament together until the beginning of 1999. Since the dissolution of the BWA in 1999, the UMB has been the sole organizer. From 1988-1991 the UMB did not host any world championships. During this time, the annual overall winner of the World Cup was crowned world champion.