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Snooker History
The game is generally regarded to have originated in the
latter half of the 19th century. Billiards had been a popular activity
amongst British Army officers stationed in India, and variations on the more
traditional billiard games were devised. One variation, devised in the
officers' mess in Jabalpur during 1874 or 1875, was to add coloured balls in
addition to the reds and black which were used for pyramid pool and life
pool. The word snooker also has military origins, being a slang term for
first-year cadets or inexperienced personnel. One version of events states
that Colonel Sir Neville Chamberlain of the Devonshire regiment was playing
this new game when his opponent failed to pot a ball and Chamberlain called
him a snooker. It thus became attached to the billiards game now bearing its
name as inexperienced players were labelled as snookers.
The game of snooker grew in
the latter half of the 19th century and the early 20th century, and by 1927
the first World Snooker Championship had been organised by Joe Davis who, as
a professional English billiards and snooker player, moved the game from a
pastime activity into a more professional sphere. Joe Davis won every world
championship until 1946 when he retired. The game went into a decline
through the 1950s and 1960s with little interest generated outside of those
who played. Things saw some improvement when in 1969, when David
Attenborough who was then a top official of the BBC, commissioned the
snooker tournament Pot Black to demonstrate the potential of colour
television, with the green table and multi-coloured balls being ideal for
showing off the advantages of colour broadcasting.
The TV series became a
ratings success and was for a time the second most popular show on BBC Two.
Interest in the game increased and the 1978 World Championship was the first
to be fully televised. The game quickly became a mainstream sport in the UK,
Ireland and much of the Commonwealth and has enjoyed much success in the
last 30 years, with most of the ranking tournaments being televised. In
recent years the loss of tobacco sponsorship has led to a decrease in the
number of professional tournaments, although some new sponsors have been
sourced; and the popularity of the game in the Far East and China, with
emerging talents such as Liang Wenbo and more established players such as
Ding Junhui and Marco Fu, bodes well for the future of the sport in that
part of the world.
The game
The object of the game is to score more points than the opponent by potting
balls in a predefined order. At the start of a frame the balls are
positioned as shown and the players take it in turns to hit a shot in a
single strike from the tip of the cue, their aim being to pot one of the red
balls and score a point. If they do pot at least one red, then it remains in
the pocket and they are allowed another shot - this time the aim being to
pot one of the colours. If successful, then they gain the value of the
colour potted. It is returned to its correct position on the table and they
must try to pot another red again. This process continues until they fail to
pot the desired ball, at which point their opponent comes back to the table
to play the next shot. The game continues in this manner until all the reds
are potted and only the 6 colours are left on the table; at that point the
aim is then to pot the colours in the above order. When a colour is potted
in this phase of a frame, it remains off the table. When the final ball is
potted, the frame is over and the player with the most points wins it.
A match where five frames would be the winner is called a "best of nine",
because that would be the maximum number frames that could be played.
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