Why do you want an improvement in the world of pool?

[Gorramjayne]

I was thinking about this the other day and it occurred to me that there's a hell of a lot of money in snooker (at least compared to pool) so maybe we should all play snooker instead. Except the pool audience would hate snooker's rules. Snooker needs to speed up and be more aggressive to appeal to pool fans.

New rules for snooker:

1) No soft breaks - three reds must pass the the middle pockets. Pink ball is left off the table until after the break, then spotted. Any color made on the break does not count and is respotted.

2) "Ball on" does NOT reset for the incoming player. You miss the color? You opponent has the option of shooting color OR red. So no playing safe up to balk tapping one of the balk colors when you don't like how the reds are sitting for a run.

3) You must make contact with the "ball on" AND a rail. None of this two-inch roll to tap a pack of reds bullshit.

4) You don't get four points for your opponent failing to make legal contact. You get ball in hand. Scratch is ball in hand.

5) Points of the colors has to change. While there are reds still on the table:
Yellow, Green and Brown = 4
Black, Pink and Blue = 2

Once the reds are gone, every color is worth 5.

6) Colors do not have to go in clean and you do not have to call your color - in fact, if you play a carom off any number of colors, you add their point value. If you pot multiple colors on the same shot, you multiply their point value by each other. Maths, b!tches!

7) The score follows a raw point total up to a 200+, like in straight pool, not racks/frames.

8) Every ball is worth double if you bank that mofo.

9) 15-second shot clock,twats. You gotta SPRINT 12 feet around the table if you play a down-table shot. No time to put on an extension? That's okay we have no foot-on-floor rule, instead you you just can't have either shoe touching the playing surface.

Also no stupid Strachan napped cloth, use only the finest Simonis bathed in teflon. The steel-backed rails and pocket shape can stay.

 

[MuchoBurrito]

This is a good question actually.

More than a few people I know (including family) ask me what I "hope to get out of" playing pool, or what my "end game" is with pool... Now, nobody asks that about someone who plays golf or hockey or chess, etc. etc. etc... But for some reason, because I've dedicated my leisure time to pool, I get these crooked questions, intimating that there's something wrong with pool. And I'm f***king sick of it to be honest.

I think I want an improvement in the pool world so people treat pool like any other competitive activity, and not like it's ****ing Jenga.

 

[vjmehra]

I was thinking about this the other day and it occurred to me that there's a hell of a lot of money in snooker (at least compared to pool) so maybe we should all play snooker instead. Except the pool audience would hate snooker's rules. Snooker needs to speed up and be more aggressive to appeal to pool fans.

New rules for snooker:

1) No soft breaks - three reds must pass the the middle pockets. Pink ball is left off the table until after the break, then spotted. Any color made on the break does not count and is respotted.

2) "Ball on" does NOT reset for the incoming player. You miss the color? You opponent has the option of shooting color OR red. So no playing safe up to balk tapping one of the balk colors when you don't like how the reds are sitting for a run.

3) You must make contact with the "ball on" AND a rail. None of this two-inch roll to tap a pack of reds bullshit.

4) You don't get four points for your opponent failing to make legal contact. You get ball in hand. Scratch is ball in hand.

5) Points of the colors has to change. While there are reds still on the table:
Yellow, Green and Brown = 4
Black, Pink and Blue = 2

Once the reds are gone, every color is worth 5.

6) Colors do not have to go in clean and you do not have to call your color - in fact, if you play a carom off any number of colors, you add their point value. If you pot multiple colors on the same shot, you multiply their point value by each other. Maths, b!tches!

7) The score follows a raw point total up to a 200+, like in straight pool, not racks/frames.

8) Every ball is worth double if you bank that mofo.

9) 15-second shot clock,twats. You gotta SPRINT 12 feet around the table if you play a down-table shot. No time to put on an extension? That's okay we have no foot-on-floor rule, instead you you just can't have either shoe touching the playing surface.

Also no stupid Strachan napped cloth, use only the finest Simonis bathed in teflon. The steel-backed rails and pocket shape can stay.

I think you're over complicating things there!

That said they do use a shot clock and ball I hand for the snooker shootout and I think it works really well.

Maybe a bit longer than 15 seconds is needed for snooker though...even Ronnie's average shot time is something like 24 seconds these days!

 

[Gorramjayne]

Fine, two reds have to cross the midline on the break, the point values of the colors remains the same, and we have a 25 second shot clock. And if you miss a color the other player gets to take a crack at it. Simple enough?

I go to a pool hall with a snooker table. I warm up on the snooker table getting my stroke in order until I can fire in the blue from any spot to any pocket without blinking, then switch over to playing rotation on a 9ft gold crown.... I have to admit, I have much more fun on the snooker table. Snooker just needs an update and it would be an amazing bit of sport, what people really want to see is amazing instinctual shooting under pressure. Ronnie's 5 minute 20 second perfect 147 break is the excitement people want, but without the tedious mucking about soft-breaking the reds, grabbing extensions and bridges, playing safe up into balk until a run opens up for a 147.

 

[vjmehra]

Fine, two reds have to cross the midline on the break, the point values of the colors remains the same, and we have a 25 second shot clock. And if you miss a color the other player gets to take a crack at it. Simple enough?

I go to a pool hall with a snooker table. I warm up on the snooker table getting my stroke in order until I can fire in the blue from any spot to any pocket without blinking, then switch over to playing rotation on a 9ft gold crown.... I have to admit, I have much more fun on the snooker table. Snooker just needs an update and it would be an amazing bit of sport, what people really want to see is amazing instinctual shooting under pressure. Ronnie's 5 minute 20 second perfect 147 break is the excitement people want, but without the tedious mucking about soft-breaking the reds, grabbing extensions and bridges, playing safe up into balk until a run opens up for a 147.

I agree with your logic, but wouldn't quite tweak it as much...

I would still make the incoming player shoot at a red, additionally I think snooker requires a defensive break, if you break the balls up then for a top player you are gifting the frame to your opponent, but in exchange for sticking with that, I'll concede on having to hit a cushion

So in summary, from your changes, I would vote for:

1) Ball in hand on all fouls (hence getting rid of the miss rule)
2) Having to hit a cushion after contact (possibly unless your snookered as in Blackball?)
3) 30 second shot clock
4) The cloth change I could be swayed on

One more that has been mentioned for pool before:

5) Allow the crowd to be loud (controversial)!

I agree people want to see fast fluent break building, but some of the safety battles can be good too (generally if they are then followed by a 100+ clearance or something so it demonstrates why it was so important to play safe for so long).

That said, snooker is (I think) growing in popularity around the world and the rules are well understood so I wouldn't change anything else.

How does that sound?

 

[Gorramjayne]

I mean, the reason I want a running point total rather than winning frames and to change the green/yellow/brown to be worth more than the black/pink/blue is so you have an incentive to play the full length of the table. If you basically reverse the point values of the colors and the scoring continued through frames, I think it would create an interesting strategy choice between a lower rate of score building nursing reds around the black/pink/blue versus taking the risk of going back and forth down the table, taking longer pots for higher reward.

I personally like snooker as-is. I was just trying to imagine how to make high-level snooker appeal to the wider pool audience. Games like snooker are hard for people to appreciate unless they've tried playing. 10-ball is a bit easier for a non-enthusiast to recognize the skill required. The least popular formats for people to watch are one-pocket (the safety play is tedious, slow, and boring for those watching who don't understand the skill it takes) and 14.1 (watching someone run 100 balls ins impressive but there's very little back-and-forth). Top-level snooker is basically both of those things. Every frame starts out with a sometimes long safety battle moving balls by just inches, then someone (who isn't Ronnie) tediously takes the next 20-30 minutes to run 30+ shots in a row all on the same half of the table.

How do we format either pool or snooker to get the type of creative safety play we see in 10-ball but with more action in the middle of the frame so that people get to see both players in action? Something where a double-digit run is hard but appreciated, yet one player will rarely just run away with a frame?

 

[Positively Ralf]

More coverage of players from Latin America. That is a part of the world that is still relatively unknown when it comes to many things, including pool/billiards.

 

[vjmehra]

I mean, the reason I want a running point total rather than winning frames and to change the green/yellow/brown to be worth more than the black/pink/blue is so you have an incentive to play the full length of the table. If you basically reverse the point values of the colors and the scoring continued through frames, I think it would create an interesting strategy choice between a lower rate of score building nursing reds around the black/pink/blue versus taking the risk of going back and forth down the table, taking longer pots for higher reward.

I personally like snooker as-is. I was just trying to imagine how to make high-level snooker appeal to the wider pool audience. Games like snooker are hard for people to appreciate unless they've tried playing. 10-ball is a bit easier for a non-enthusiast to recognize the skill required. The least popular formats for people to watch are one-pocket (the safety play is tedious, slow, and boring for those watching who don't understand the skill it takes) and 14.1 (watching someone run 100 balls ins impressive but there's very little back-and-forth). Top-level snooker is basically both of those things. Every frame starts out with a sometimes long safety battle moving balls by just inches, then someone (who isn't Ronnie) tediously takes the next 20-30 minutes to run 30+ shots in a row all on the same half of the table.

How do we format either pool or snooker to get the type of creative safety play we see in 10-ball but with more action in the middle of the frame so that people get to see both players in action? Something where a double-digit run is hard but appreciated, yet one player will rarely just run away with a frame?

Switch the position of the colours, so black, pink, blue are in the d, brown on the blue spot, green on the pink and yellow on the black.

I'd try the other changes we mentioned first, as I'm not convinced this is necessary, but it could work!

 

[acesinc1999]

You're funny!

I was thinking about this the other day and it occurred to me that there's a hell of a lot of money in snooker (at least compared to pool) so maybe we should all play snooker instead. Except the pool audience would hate snooker's rules. Snooker needs to speed up and be more aggressive to appeal to pool fans.

New rules for snooker:

1) No soft breaks - three reds must pass the the middle pockets. Pink ball is left off the table until after the break, then spotted. Any color made on the break does not count and is respotted.

2) "Ball on" does NOT reset for the incoming player. You miss the color? You opponent has the option of shooting color OR red. So no playing safe up to balk tapping one of the balk colors when you don't like how the reds are sitting for a run.

3) You must make contact with the "ball on" AND a rail. None of this two-inch roll to tap a pack of reds bullshit.

4) You don't get four points for your opponent failing to make legal contact. You get ball in hand. Scratch is ball in hand.

5) Points of the colors has to change. While there are reds still on the table:
Yellow, Green and Brown = 4
Black, Pink and Blue = 2

Once the reds are gone, every color is worth 5.

6) Colors do not have to go in clean and you do not have to call your color - in fact, if you play a carom off any number of colors, you add their point value. If you pot multiple colors on the same shot, you multiply their point value by each other. Maths, b!tches!

7) The score follows a raw point total up to a 200+, like in straight pool, not racks/frames.

8) Every ball is worth double if you bank that mofo.

9) 15-second shot clock,twats. You gotta SPRINT 12 feet around the table if you play a down-table shot. No time to put on an extension? That's okay we have no foot-on-floor rule, instead you you just can't have either shoe touching the playing surface.

Also no stupid Strachan napped cloth, use only the finest Simonis bathed in teflon. The steel-backed rails and pocket shape can stay.

Snooker is the most popular cue sport in the world. Both for recreational play and for television viewing. By far.

Even the great Joe Davis tried to tinker with the formula by coming up with the concept of Snooker Plus. It went over like a lead balloon.

Snooker's popularity primarily began with the advent of colour television and thus exposure to the common masses. In the US, the cart is well ahead of the horse as somehow, we expect pool or snooker to magically become more popular by forcing those yet unaware of the appeal of the cue sports to somehow seek out that appeal of their own volition rather than being drawn in by the magical view of the "mini-pitch" on the television screen that they accidentally clicked across. People don't just wander into an arbitrary snooker hall looking for a public bathroom then fall in love with the pastime being played on the tables that they have to walk past. They must first become aware of its existence through a common, everyday exposure such as the word of a friend or an accidental stumble across on the TV screen. The way I did over thirty years ago.

It would certainly not become any more popular with the advent of your suggested changes. Anyone who believes Snooker is a slow game certainly isn't doing it right.