Evergruven asked my thoughts about some things concerning the differences between pool and snooker and pool and snooker players. Like most things I have opinions! I did put in a few thousand hours on a snooker table and many more on pool tables to develop these opinions. Never played in a snooker tournament at any level, just used it as a very tight table to practice my pool skills on. I did play snooker games.
Here are his questions and my thoughts. It seemed better to start a new thread than to derail an old one this thoroughly.(grin)
I don't think you can have it both ways with the pro's playing head to head with nonpro's all the time and with them having a pro tour that the average spectator will respect. Several ways to achieve some separation but right now a hungry pro wants to be able to play in small tournaments against weekend warriors. You can't get in the grease with amateurs in a forty dollar entry tournament then expect them to pay that much or more to watch you play next weekend.
The two games are quite a bit different. The snooker balls are a lot lighter and my moderately low deflection pool cue with a fairly long pro taper and about a 12.25mm tip became very high deflection when I whacked a few snooker balls with it.
With proper equipment running snooker balls is only slightly harder than running pool balls. A pool player thinks it is much harder at first because they do have to learn to deal with the curved pockets and a new idea of where to aim. However, got to admit the top level snooker pro's have a heck of a touch! The standard break shot is meant as a safety. It travels roughly twenty-five feet and they try to hide behind a single ball. It is similar to a one pocket break with an added difficulty of 1.5 or 2 I believe.
The biggest difference is that pro snooker players at the top level can't buy a cue and announce they are pro's, they have to qualify. Many club players that try can't make the transition. Not sure how accurate this paragraph is these days because Ronnie is fussing about having to come through some players he is pretty dismissive of.
Ronnie has played pool with a lot of cash available to the winner, the short lived IPT. He tried with his snooker stick, he tried with a pool stick. He couldn't make an overnight transition. He has compared pool to putt-putt golf, he has said it would take him five years to come up to speed as a pool player. I think the truth lies somewhere in between.
I spent several hours a day on a tough snooker table for around three years, very rarely missing a day. Then I would go gamble on usually bar tables. A local hustler was staying with me a few days and I drug him to the snooker table. He had the usual problems but unlike most pool players who try snooker I was there to coach him and explain things like the available pocket compared to the available pool pocket. After forty-five minutes he was pocketing snooker balls pretty well with the house pool cues we both used. An hour more and we went to a nice small action bar. He got on a table gambling and the very first ball he hit, he turned, looked at me, and grinned. I just said "Yeah." The snooker effect makes it seem impossible to miss on a bar table for awhile afterwards.
If a pool player went with the mentality he was going to make the adjustments to play snooker I think they could make the adjustments to be very close to their pool speed on a snooker table in about two years. The food, the culture, the language, a lot of big adjustments to go live in england or the rest of europe and I think that has as much to do with keeping americans off the snooker circuit as playing skills. Going from champion to back in the pack for awhile wouldn't come easy either. I also don't know what an american would have to do to qualify.
The european lady snooker players came over here and did well but to be blunt our ladies were new to pool as a whole and the fields were pretty soft with a few notable exceptions. Now the lady pro's can't quite equal the men for reasons I can't explain. However, there are at least a double handful of ladies that can take down a shortstop in a tournament sometimes and the occasional male pro. They aren't to be taken lightly today.
Pool to snooker or snooker to pool, I would say that it would take close to two years of pretty serious effort to get very close to your old speed at the new pursuit. This is talking about a young person with great flexibility and eyes. We get set in our ways and our eyesight doesn't have the same depth of field as we age.
I do think that a young Shane could have been a force to be reckoned with had he swapped to snooker at twenty or twenty-two if he could get past the culture shock. Likewise I think Ronnie could have been one of the top few pool players in the world had he swapped over and stayed with pool at a young age. Snooker requires a little better aim and touch sometimes but the six by twelve dimensions intimidate many pool players unduly. Most of the play is in a 4'x6' area in most games and then you usually run out the same drill every game with the six colors on their home spots.
There is a difference in basic mindset between the US men and women and between the US men and other men around the world. Almost impossible to get the US men to work together. All efforts to organize them are met with stiff resistance before long. Even trying to organize themselves usually fails. Our players have a me against the world attitude that is very hard to mold into a team or a cohesive organization that can work for the betterment of the sport. I guess I could have written this paragraph first and skipped the book I wrote above!
Hu
Here are his questions and my thoughts. It seemed better to start a new thread than to derail an old one this thoroughly.(grin)
I don't think you can have it both ways with the pro's playing head to head with nonpro's all the time and with them having a pro tour that the average spectator will respect. Several ways to achieve some separation but right now a hungry pro wants to be able to play in small tournaments against weekend warriors. You can't get in the grease with amateurs in a forty dollar entry tournament then expect them to pay that much or more to watch you play next weekend.
The two games are quite a bit different. The snooker balls are a lot lighter and my moderately low deflection pool cue with a fairly long pro taper and about a 12.25mm tip became very high deflection when I whacked a few snooker balls with it.
With proper equipment running snooker balls is only slightly harder than running pool balls. A pool player thinks it is much harder at first because they do have to learn to deal with the curved pockets and a new idea of where to aim. However, got to admit the top level snooker pro's have a heck of a touch! The standard break shot is meant as a safety. It travels roughly twenty-five feet and they try to hide behind a single ball. It is similar to a one pocket break with an added difficulty of 1.5 or 2 I believe.
The biggest difference is that pro snooker players at the top level can't buy a cue and announce they are pro's, they have to qualify. Many club players that try can't make the transition. Not sure how accurate this paragraph is these days because Ronnie is fussing about having to come through some players he is pretty dismissive of.
Ronnie has played pool with a lot of cash available to the winner, the short lived IPT. He tried with his snooker stick, he tried with a pool stick. He couldn't make an overnight transition. He has compared pool to putt-putt golf, he has said it would take him five years to come up to speed as a pool player. I think the truth lies somewhere in between.
I spent several hours a day on a tough snooker table for around three years, very rarely missing a day. Then I would go gamble on usually bar tables. A local hustler was staying with me a few days and I drug him to the snooker table. He had the usual problems but unlike most pool players who try snooker I was there to coach him and explain things like the available pocket compared to the available pool pocket. After forty-five minutes he was pocketing snooker balls pretty well with the house pool cues we both used. An hour more and we went to a nice small action bar. He got on a table gambling and the very first ball he hit, he turned, looked at me, and grinned. I just said "Yeah." The snooker effect makes it seem impossible to miss on a bar table for awhile afterwards.
If a pool player went with the mentality he was going to make the adjustments to play snooker I think they could make the adjustments to be very close to their pool speed on a snooker table in about two years. The food, the culture, the language, a lot of big adjustments to go live in england or the rest of europe and I think that has as much to do with keeping americans off the snooker circuit as playing skills. Going from champion to back in the pack for awhile wouldn't come easy either. I also don't know what an american would have to do to qualify.
The european lady snooker players came over here and did well but to be blunt our ladies were new to pool as a whole and the fields were pretty soft with a few notable exceptions. Now the lady pro's can't quite equal the men for reasons I can't explain. However, there are at least a double handful of ladies that can take down a shortstop in a tournament sometimes and the occasional male pro. They aren't to be taken lightly today.
Pool to snooker or snooker to pool, I would say that it would take close to two years of pretty serious effort to get very close to your old speed at the new pursuit. This is talking about a young person with great flexibility and eyes. We get set in our ways and our eyesight doesn't have the same depth of field as we age.
I do think that a young Shane could have been a force to be reckoned with had he swapped to snooker at twenty or twenty-two if he could get past the culture shock. Likewise I think Ronnie could have been one of the top few pool players in the world had he swapped over and stayed with pool at a young age. Snooker requires a little better aim and touch sometimes but the six by twelve dimensions intimidate many pool players unduly. Most of the play is in a 4'x6' area in most games and then you usually run out the same drill every game with the six colors on their home spots.
There is a difference in basic mindset between the US men and women and between the US men and other men around the world. Almost impossible to get the US men to work together. All efforts to organize them are met with stiff resistance before long. Even trying to organize themselves usually fails. Our players have a me against the world attitude that is very hard to mold into a team or a cohesive organization that can work for the betterment of the sport. I guess I could have written this paragraph first and skipped the book I wrote above!
Hu
