NORTHERN billiard champion David Bates, playing for Works Black, took no time to get settled into billiards, one week after winning his snooker matches in the Northern A-grade snooker grand final.

Bates knocked in a 132 break, the biggest break made in Northern Tasmania in more than a decade. Bates gave 380 points start to Heath Rainbow, and scored 495 to win.

Works Black won the match against Devils 3-1, Terry Adams and Scott Kopriva were the other winners for Black. Andrew Rainbow was Devils' winner.

Launceston RSL White won 3-1 against Raiders - Dennis Collins, Adrian White and Wayne Purdon won for RSL. Keith Coomber was Raiders' only winner.

Exeter drew 2-all with Works Red at Exeter. For the home team, Derek Peart and Rex Swain were winners and for Red, Bob Cain and Peter Seaman got the points.

Works Gold and Works Navy also drew 2-all. Rolf Stevenson and Steve Leary won for Gold, and Alan Legg and Ray Skinner were Navy's winners.

Works Green scored a 2-1 win against Works Blue. George Zammit and Cor Zoon won for Green. Peter Donati made up 315 points to win his match for Blue.

Snooker

THE Australian open snooker championship, played at the Mounties Club in Sydney, was an all-Victorian final, won by Rudi Sulaeman, who defeated Aaron Mahoney 6-3 in the final.

Tasmanian Les Higgins, following his win in the Australian 6 Red Championship, progressed to the last 16, beating Vince Lawson 4-0 (New South Wales) and Joe Minici 4-2 (NSW), but then went down to West Australian Steve Saxon 2-4, who was beaten by Sulaeman 5-1 in the semi-final.

Tasmania's other players were Luke Webb, who was beaten 4-2 by Ben Judge (WA), and Gerrad Wicks, who went down to former champion Glen Wilkinson from NSW 4-0.

Wilkinson made the highest break of 131. Other breaks were Ian Barber (NSW) 104, Steve Mifsud (Victoria) 100, Chris Calabrese (NSW) 96, Vinnie Calabrese (NSW) 95, Les Higgins (Tasmania) 79, 69, 62, 56.

For more information visit www.nteba.com.au or call the secretary on 0487171966.