SEOUL – The Belgian billiards player Frédéric Caudron, 55 five years of age, has announced that he will directly leave the PBA organization, known as the Korean professional league. The departure is expected with immediate effect. The PBA simultaneously announced an official press conference for Monday, but already confirmed the huge news. Mister Heejin Lee, ceo of PBA, said: ''The news that he leaves is true, we will confirm it in a press release on Monday.''

The big news from the PBA comes one week after Frédéric Caudron won the last PBA event, the Silkroad Asan tournament, in a final against Turk Birol Uymaz. That was Caudron's eighth PBA win in his fifth year of playing in South Korea. Thereby, the Belgian has now collected around 700,000 euros in prize money.

Last week’s PBA victory ended in some commotion over a common picture of the two winners: Frédéric Caudron in the men's, Cambodian Sruong Pheavy in the women's. The story goes that a private photographer of Pheavy wanted the two winners to be pictured a bit closer together, but Caudron refused. That ended in a minor riot, with Caudron walking away from the press conference.

Frédéric Caudron was one of the first and certainly one of the best-known players to leave the UMB (official world federation of billiards) five years ago for a professional adventure with the PBA. The Belgian has since been the big star in South Korea, winning eight tournaments by now, including the one considered by the PBA as the world championship.

During his time with the UMB, Caudron was, among other things, a three-time three-cushion world champion and won 21 World Cups. Due to his departure for the PBA, he was suspended by the UMB and was no longer allowed to play official tournaments, such as the World Championship and World Cup tournaments. The UMB and PBA were still negotiating about those suspensions last month, but without any result and success.

It is not yet known what Frédéric Caudron will do next. He himself gave a brief statement about his departure (see embedded message) and will probably explain further on Monday.

Frédéric Caudron in one of his great moments after the last PBA victory