Snooker

Snooker is a cue sport that was first played by British Army officers stationed in India in the second half of the 19th century. It is played on a rectangular table covered with a green cloth called "baize", with six pockets: one at each corner and one in the middle of each long side. Using a cue stick, the individual players or teams take turns to strike the white "cue ball" to pot the other twenty-one snooker balls in the correct sequence, accumulating points for each pot. An individual frame of snooker is won by the player who has scored the most points. A snooker match ends with one of the players having won a predetermined number of frames.

Snooker gained its identity in 1875 when army officer Sir Neville Chamberlain (1856–1944), stationed in Ootacamund, Madras, and Jubbulpore, devised a set of rules that combined black pool and pyramids. The word snooker was a well-established derogatory term used to describe inexperienced or first-year military personnel. In the early 20th century, snooker was predominantly played in the United Kingdom where it was considered a "gentleman's sport" until the early 1960s, before growing in popularity as a national pastime and eventually spreading overseas. The standard rules of the game were first established in 1919 when the Billiards Association and Control Club was formed. As a professional sport, snooker is now governed by the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association, founded in 1968.

The World Snooker Championship has taken place since 1927. Joe Davis, a key figure and pioneer in the early growth of the sport, won fifteen successive world championships between 1927 and 1946. The "modern era" of snooker began in 1969 after the broadcaster BBC commissioned the television series Pot Black, later airing daily coverage of the World Championship which was first televised in 1978. Key figures in the game were Ray Reardon in the 1970s, Steve Davis in the 1980s, and Stephen Hendry in the 1990s, each winning the World Championship on multiple occasions. Since 2000, Ronnie O'Sullivan has won the most world titles.

Top professional players compete in regular tournaments around the world, earning millions of pounds on the World Snooker Tour, a circuit of international events featuring competitors of many different nationalities. The three main professional tournaments—the World Championship, the UK Championship, and the Masters—together make up the Triple Crown Series, considered by many players to be the most highly valued titles. Although the main professional tour is open to females, there is a separate amateur women's tour organised by World Women's Snooker. Competitive snooker is also available to non-professional players, including seniors and people with disabilities. The popularity of snooker has led to the creation of many variations based on the standard game, but using different rules or equipment, for example six-red snooker, the short-lived "snooker plus", and the more recent Snooker Shoot Out version.

History 

The origin of snooker dates back to the second half of the 19th century. In the 1870s, billiards was popular among British Army officers stationed in Jubbulpore, India, and several variations of the game were devised during this time. One version, which originated at the Officers' Mess of the 11th Devonshire Regiment in 1875, combined the rules of two pool games: pyramid pool, played with fifteen red-coloured balls positioned in a triangle; and black pool, which involved the potting of designated balls. Snooker was further developed in 1882 when its first set of rules was finalised by British Army officer Sir Neville Chamberlain, who helped devise and popularise the game at Stone House in Ootacamund on a table built by Burroughes & Watts that had been brought to India by boat. The word snooker was, at the time, a slang term used in the British Army to describe new recruits and inexperienced military personnel, and Chamberlain used it to deride the inferior performance of a young fellow officer at the table.

Snooker was given its first definite reference in England in an 1887 issue of the Sporting Life newspaper, which led to a growth in popularity. Chamberlain was revealed to be the game's inventor, 63 years after the fact, in a letter to The Field magazine published on 19 March 1938. Snooker became increasingly popular across the Indian colonies of the British Raj, and in the United Kingdom, but it remained a game mainly for military officers and the gentry,[11] and many gentlemen's clubs that had a snooker table would not allow non-members inside to play. To cater for the growing interest, smaller and more open snooker-specific clubs were formed. The Billiards Association (formed 1885) and the Billiards Control Club (formed 1908) merged to form the Billiards Association and Control Club (BA&CC) and a new, standardised set of rules for snooker was first established.

Played in 1926 and 1927, the first World Snooker Championship—then known as the Professional Championship of Snooker—was organised by Joe Davis. As a professional English billiards and snooker player himself, Davis raised the game from being simply a recreational pastime to becoming also a professional sporting activity. Entirely dominant, he won every tournament until 1946, when he retired from taking part in the championships. The 1952 World Snooker Championship was only contested by two players and was replaced by the World Professional Match-play Championship, but was also discontinued in 1957. Feeling that the popularity of the game was waning, Davis introduced a variation known as "snooker plus", with the addition of two extra colours, but this failed to attract attention and was very short-lived. A Women's Professional Snooker Championship (now the World Women's Snooker Championship) was created in 1934 for top female players, whilst the IBSF World Snooker Championship designed for top amateur players was founded in 1963.

The return of the game to the public consciousness was due to the growth of colour television. In 1969, David Attenborough (then the controller of BBC2) commissioned the snooker tournament television series, Pot Black, primarily to showcase the potential of the BBC's new colour service, as the green table and multi-coloured balls provided an ideal opportunity to demonstrate the advantages of the new broadcasting technology. The series became a ratings success and was, for a time, the second-most popular show on BBC2 behind Morecambe and Wise. Interest in the game increased in the next decade and the 1978 World Snooker Championship was the first to receive daily television coverage. Snooker quickly became regarded as a mainstream game in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and much of the Commonwealth, and has remained consistently popular since the late 1970s, with most of the major tournaments being televised. In 1985, an estimated 18.5 million viewers watched the conclusion of the World Championship final between Dennis Taylor and Steve Davis, a record viewership in the UK for any broadcast after midnight.

In the early 2000s, a ban on tobacco advertising led to a reduction in the number of professional tournament, which decreased from twenty-two events in 1999 to fifteen in 2003. However, the popularity of the game in Asia, with emerging talents such as Liang Wenbo and more established players such as Ding Junhui and Marco Fu, boosted the sport in the Far East. By 2007, the BBC dedicated 400 hours to snooker coverage, compared to just 14 minutes 40 years earlier. In 2010, promoter Barry Hearn gained a controlling interest in the World Snooker Tour, pledging to revitalise the "moribund" professional game. Since then, the number of professional tournaments has increased, with 44 events held in the 2019–20 season. Snooker tournaments have been adapted to make them more suitable for television audiences, with some tournaments being played over a shortened duration, or the Snooker Shoot Out, which is a timed, one-frame competition. The prize money for professional events has increased as the sport continues to grow, with the top players earning several million pounds over the course of their careers. Englishman Mark Selby, the winner of the 2021 World Snooker Championship received £500,000 out of a total prize fund of £2,395,000.