Snooker

Snook­er is a kind of bil­liard game that con­quers mil­lions of peo­ple around the world. Snook­er can be safe­ly attrib­uted to one of those sports that peo­ple often like to watch on the screen than to take part in the game them­selves. As a high­ly enter­tain­ing game, snook­er requires a high lev­el of skill that, for var­i­ous rea­sons, is beyond the reach of most ama­teurs.

Snook­er is a game of intel­lec­tu­als. It is not enough to have a per­fect hit­ting tech­nique and the abil­i­ty to con­trol the exit of the cue ball. The abil­i­ty to play snook­er also requires excel­lent tac­ti­cal and strate­gic think­ing. Only a mis­cal­cu­la­tion of your own actions and the actions of your oppo­nent sev­er­al moves ahead can guar­an­tee the suc­cess of snook­er play­ers. In fact, many games are won pre­cise­ly due to the cor­rect tac­ti­cal con­duct of the game. But ide­al­ly, you need to be a mas­ter in both roles, because it is smart and tech­ni­cal play­ers who often become cham­pi­ons.

His­to­ry of snook­er

The his­to­ry of bil­liards dates back to the 15th cen­tu­ry, but the actu­al game of snook­er is a lat­er inven­tion. In the late 19th cen­tu­ry, bil­liards was very pop­u­lar among the British offi­cer corps in India. Play­ers often exper­i­ment­ed with vari­a­tions and rules of the game. The most com­mon ver­sion is that snook­er was invent­ed by Colonel Sir Neville Cham­ber­lain at the offi­cers’ club in Jabalpur (India), who added col­ored balls to the pool table. It hap­pened in 1875, ini­tial­ly four col­ored balls were added, in 1890 there were already 6 of them. The very word “snook­er” in the then army slang meant cadets of the first year of ser­vice. Then it began to mean new­com­ers to the game, and over time it became the name of the game itself and one of the “favorite” posi­tions in the game.

In 1919, the rules of snook­er were offi­cial­ly estab­lished, and the first world cham­pi­onship was held in Birm­ing­ham in late 1926 — ear­ly 1927. In the 1950s — 1960s, due to lack of fund­ing and a uni­fied man­age­ment orga­ni­za­tion, snook­er fell into decline. But in the ear­ly 1970s. spon­sors appeared and snook­er cham­pi­onships began to be broad­cast on tele­vi­sion. By 1976, snook­er is becom­ing a pop­u­lar pro­fes­sion­al sport, with lead­ing play­ers earn­ing mil­lions in roy­al­ties. Since the 1980s, there has been an active pro­mo­tion of this game in Asian coun­tries and regions (espe­cial­ly in the Mid­dle East and Far East), and now sev­er­al lead­ing play­ers are from Asian coun­tries.

Now snook­er is very pop­u­lar in Eng­lish-speak­ing coun­tries (in the UK, snook­er is the sec­ond most pop­u­lar after foot­ball), as well as in Chi­na and Aus­tralia. World snook­er cham­pi­onships are held annu­al­ly, as well as var­i­ous tour­na­ments in dif­fer­ent coun­tries of the world. Thanks to fre­quent TV broad­casts, every year the game finds new fans around the world, includ­ing at the expense of our coun­try.

Snook­er Rules

Snook­er is played with 15 red and 6 col­ored balls. The white ball acts as the cue ball. The object of the game is to alter­nate­ly pock­et red and col­ored balls into the pock­et. On a miss, the turn pass­es to the oppo­nent. The play­er with the max­i­mum num­ber of points wins. The game is not sim­ple and there are many game nuances that require inter­pre­ta­tion “from the out­side”, so there is always a judge in the game.

The cost of balls when play­ing snook­er:

• red — 1 point
• yel­low — 2 points
• green — 3 points
• brown — 4 points
• blue — 5 points
• pink — 6 points
• black — 7 points

The max­i­mum num­ber of points that can be scored when play­ing snook­er is 147. This result is called the “max­i­mum break”. There are also “cen­tu­ry breaks” when a play­er scores 100 or more points in one move. There is a posi­tion in the game in which the object ball is closed from the cue ball by anoth­er ball and there is no pos­si­bil­i­ty of a direct hit on it, with the name of the game itself — “snook­er”.

Snook­er is a game that requires an ath­lete not only to have excel­lent tech­ni­cal skills and tac­ti­cal skills. It also teach­es you to be in con­trol of your­self in any sit­u­a­tion, because in the game every­thing often goes against you and you need good self-con­trol in order to turn the sit­u­a­tion back at any moment. It was thanks to self-con­trol that many of the most impor­tant games were won.

At first glance, sur­pris­ing­ly, snook­er requires good phys­i­cal fit­ness, lead­ing snook­er play­ers devote a lot of time to their phys­i­cal devel­op­ment. In the train­ing of snook­er play­ers, in addi­tion to actu­al­ly play­ing bil­liards, prac­tic­ing tech­niques, spar­ring, some types of aer­o­bic and strength exer­cis­es are includ­ed.

But at the same time, snook­er is also a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to relax and unwind. And to under­stand this, it is prob­a­bly worth try­ing to play it your­self. Play snook­er and good luck!

Author: Alexan­der Kuznetsov

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