About Snooker

Snooker is a billiard sport, particularly popular in the United Kingdom, Australia, the United States, China, India and a few other countries. A billiard sport is any skill sport played with a cue which is used to hit the balls. Cue sports fall into three categories: carom billiards, pool (including highly popular eight-ball, nine-ball, straight pool, bank pool and one-pocket) and snooker.

Snooker itself is played with a cue stick on a green rectangular table which is covered with baize and has six pockets, four in the corners and two in the half way of the two longer sides. To play snooker, a cue and snooker balls are needed. The general objective of the game is to pot the balls with a cue. There are balls with different colours and values: one white cue ball, fifteen red balls (each for 1 point), one yellow (2 points), one green (3 points), one brown (4 points), one blue (5 points), one pink (6 points), and the last black one worth 7 points. An individual game between players is called a frame. The frame is won by that player who, using the cue, scores more points by sinking the red and coloured balls into the pockets. The full-size of the table is 12 ft-6 ft (3.7 m – 1.8 m).

There is a strict order for placing the balls in the pockets. Firstly, in turns, players try to pot any of the red balls. Placing the red one in a pocket gives a player the right to try any of the coloured balls. Once the coloured ball lands in the pocket, it is returned to its previous position on the table. Then once more the player has to sink any of the red balls, so that he can gain the right to the coloured one. Whenever the player fails to pot, the opponent comes to the table to shoot, but when the player scores he continues to play and the value of the potted ball is added to his total score.

There comes the moment in the game when there are no more red balls on the table. Then, all the coloured ones, without placing them back on the table as was the case earlier, have to be potted in the following order: yellow, green, brown, blue, pink, and the final black. When the black one lands in the pocket, the player who has scored more points wins the frame.