Snooker

Snooker is a cue sport for two players which is played on a rectangular table covered with a green cloth, or baize, with pockets at each of the four corners and in the middle of each long side.

Snooker is popular in the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth and parts of Asia.

HISTORY

Snooker can be traced back to the game of ground billiards, played on a lawn with hoops and mallets.

Ground billiards in England c1300

When Colonel Neville Chamberlain was serving as a young subaltern in the 11th Devonshire Regiment in India, during the long rainy season many of the officers whiled away their spare time playing billiards in the mess. For variety, Chamberlain introduced balls of different colors and values, combining the rules of two pocket billiards games, pyramid and life pool.

Chamberlain is also credited with naming the new game. "Snooker" was derogatory slang for first-year cadets studying at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich.

Colonel Neville Chamberlain later finalised Snooker's first set of rules in 1884.

David Attenborough commissioned snooker series Pot Black when head of programming at BBC 2 in 1969. The game was seem as a way of highlighting new color TV technology.  The series helped transform snooker from a minority sport played by just a handful of professionals into one of the most popular sports in the UK.

The 1985 World Championship final, in which he Steve Davis lost to Dennis Taylor on the final black, attracted 18.5 million viewers — BBC2’s largest ever audience.

SNOOKER PLAYERS

Joe Davis (April  15, 1901 – July 10, 1978) won every snooker world championship from 1926 until 1946 when he retired.

In 1955 Joe Davis became the first man to compile an officially recognized maximum snooker break of 147. He achieved the feat in an exhibition match at Leicester Square Hall.

Joe Davis created a variation on the normal game of snooker with two extra balls, purple and orange, which meant the maximum break rose from 147 to 210. It was launched in 1959, but never took off.

Ronnie O'Sullivan (born December 5, 1975) considered one of the greatest snooker players of all time, once purposely missed a maximum score of 147 by one point because he didn't think the £10,000 prize was high enough.

Ronnie O' Sullivan's 147 against Mick Price at the 1997 World Championship took him just 320 seconds. It is the fastest maximum in history.

Ronnie O'Sullivan was accused of disrespect by an opponent for using his opposite hand to take a shot. To prove he wasn't bringing the game into disrepute, he played three frames with his left-hand against a former world championship runner-up, winning all three.

O'Sullivan became the first snooker player to make 1,000 competitive century breaks, when he compiled his one thousandth in the winning frame of the 2019 Players Championship final against Neil Robertson, in March 2019.

Ronnie O’Sullivan playing in 2012 German Masters final. By DerHexer

Neil Robertson became during the 2013/2014 season the first player to make 100 centuries in a single season.

Snooker player Bill Webeniuk was famous for his drinking ability. He once drank 76 cans of beer during a match. At one point of his career Werbeniuk was ranked #8 in the world.

Former snooker world champion Peter Ebdon is color blind - not ideal given his profession. He has wrongly potted the brown on several occasions thinking it was red.

FUN SNOOKER FACTS

Under the official rules of snooker, the referee shall, if a player is color blind, tell him the color of a ball if requested.

Breaks greater than 147 are possible if there is a foul by the opponent leaving a free ball before any of the reds have been potted. Only one break of over 147 has occurred in professional competition, when Jamie Burnett made a break of 148 in the qualifying stages of the 2004 UK Championship

The children's author Roald Dahl was buried with his snooker cues.