Amee Kamani


Amee Kamani is an Indian snooker player. She was runner-up in the 2016 IBSF World Snooker Championship, and was the 2018 Asian Billiards Sports Championships Ladies Champion.

Early life

Kamani's main sporting focus was on table tennis from the ages of 7 to 17. However, she lost interest in table tennis in 2010 due to feeling that she was not being supported despite her successes, and might never become a top player. She played pool recreationally, and her friends suggested that she try other cue sports. She took up snooker, practicing at the Madhya Pradesh Snooker and Billiards Academy in Indore from 2011.

Playing career

At the 2014 Australian Open, held in Sydney, Kamini won all of her five matches in the qualifying round, four of them 2–0 and the other 2–1. She then beat Suniti Damani 3–0 in the quarter-final, and Jennifer Budd 4–0 in the semi-final. In the final, Kamani lost the first three frames to Jessica Woods, then won the next to trail 2–3. Woods won the sixth frame to complete a 4–2 win.
Kamani won the Indian National Snooker title in 2015, with a 4–2 defeat of Vidya Pillai in the final.

2015 ISBF Events

At the 2015 IBSF 6-Red Snooker Championship, Kamani topped her qualifying group. in the knockout phase, she beat Floriza Andal 4–1 but then lost 1–4 to Ng On-yee in the semi-final.
2015 also saw Kamani reach the semi-final of the 2015 IBSF World Snooker Championship. She topped her qualifying group, winning all four matches without losing a frame, including a victory over Wendy Jans, who had won the title in the three previous years and would go on to win the tournament. In the knockout, Kamani beat Amy Claire King 4–0 and Chitra Magimairajan 4–3 before losing 3–4 to Anastasia Nechaeva after leading 3–1.
In the 2015 ISBF 6-red snooker tournament, held in Karachi, Kamani reached the semi-final and won the first frame against Ng On-yee, but then scored only 31 points whilst losing the next four frames and the match.

2016

Kamani started 2016 by winning the Indian National 6-Red Snooker Championship with a 4–1 victory over Vidya Pillai in the final. In the National Snooker Championships the following month, the same two players met in the final, but this time Pillai won, 4–2, to take the title from Kamani.
In November 2016, Kamani reached the final of the 2016 IBSF World Snooker Championship, playing Wendy Jans, with Jans looking to win her fifth consecutive world title. Kamani lost each of the first two frames on the black, and from there Jans went on to a 5–0 victory.

Triple National Title Holder

Kamani won the Indian National 6-Red snooker championship in Mumbai in December 2016, and followed this with victories in the 2017 national billiards championship and national snooker championship to hold all three titles at the same time. In the billiards tournament she beat Varsha Sanjeev in the final, and in the snooker final won 4–2 over Arantxa Sanchis.
She was part of the "Hyderabad Hustlers" team in Cue Slam, a 2017 series of events featuring five teams playing a series of snooker and Nine-ball pool matches, but her team failed to progress beyond the group stage. Other players participating included Kelly Fisher, Vidya Pillai, Laura Evans, Anastasia Nechaeva, Darren Morgan and Pankaj Advani
In 2018, Kamani won the 2018 Asian Billiards Sports Championships Ladies Championship organised by the Asian Confederation of Billiards Sports. She topped the table for qualifying, then in the knockout competition defeated Aye Mi Aung 3–0 and Ka Kai Wan 3–1, then winning 3–0 against Siripaporn Nuanthakhamjan.
Kamani was selected as part of "Women's Team Asia" which won at the World Team Trophy event in Paris in March 2019. This was a demonstration event to promote the inclusion of cue sports at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, featuring simultaneous play of three games, snooker, carom and pool, in the same hall.
She was runner-up to Nutcharut Wongharuthai in the 2019 International Billiards and Snooker Federation World Women's 6 Reds Championship, losing 2–4 in the final.

Titles and achievements