Snooker
About Snooker
Snooker is a cue sport played on a rectangular billiards table covered with a green cloth called baize, with six pockets: one at each corner and one in the middle of each long side. First played by British Army officers stationed in India in the second half of the 19th century, the game is played with 22 balls, comprising a white cue ball, 15 red balls and six other balls—a yellow, green, brown, blue, pink and black—collectively called 'the colours'. Using a snooker cue, the individual players or teams take turns to strike the cue ball to pot other balls in a predefined sequence, accumulating points for each successful pot and for each foul committed by the opposing player or team. An individual frame of snooker is won by the player who has scored the most points, and a snooker match ends when a player wins a predetermined number of frames.
On the show — 7 mentions total
Snooker's got fairly sort of poshish sort of foundations, doesn't it? Because it was invented, supposedly — this is the big story — by Neville Chamberlain, not the Prime Minister, but apparently a cousin. The reports are a bit dodgy, but apparently he was in India in the 1800s, and he basically incorporated two existing games.
from 537: No Such Thing As The Notorious British Institute of Graphologists, 2024-06-27 at 00:08:50 · read transcript
Other times Snooker came up
It's just psychological torture. Are there any other games which are like that where, I know tennis you're only playing when your opponent is not playing. Usually it's quite soon before you're playing again. I don't know actually, but that is one of the main things about snooker is the psychological angle of it. Although Ronnie O'Sullivan said he likes it, obviously, because he's always going to be... Who's Ronny O'Sullivan?
537: No Such Thing As The Notorious British Institute of Graphologists, 2024-06-27 · listen
A bit like snooker, your opponent sat there for quite a long time. time just watching you play. Yeah. In 1907, a new technique was discovered where, you know, the pockets in Snooker, where the ball goes into. What this guy called Walter Lovejoy managed to do was to get two balls stuck in the pocket. So he could just tap these two balls every time and they would always hit the cushion or hit each other.
No Such Thing As The Notorious British Institute of Graphologists, 2024-06-27 · listen
I think there is a connection. between croquet and snooker really i think snook kind of grew out of croquet like games yeah and that's why the that's why the table's green because it was like originally played on grass right the bays the bays um which has has to have do you know the difference between the bays in snooker and pool i got a bit too into table makeup actually oh no is it the nap yeah i was gonna almost disqualify you from answering this question james i full disclosure i am very much into snook You're not allowed to answer any more quiz questions in this section. What's the nap? The nap is the way that the kind of hairs on the substance that the table is made of bend. Basically in Snooker you have to have a nap. That means that it's a little bit like if you imagine a velvet surface. In fact, if you look at those cushions over there.
No Such Thing As The Notorious British Institute of Graphologists, 2024-06-27 · listen
That would be a game. Actually, Snooker isn't played on a snooker table. It's played on a billiards table. What? Because Billiards was invented before it, and then Snooka was played on the billiards table, and we still call it a billiards table, rather than a snooker table officially. What gets played on a snooker table? There's no such thing. There's no such thing as a snooker table?
No Such Thing As The Notorious British Institute of Graphologists, 2024-06-27 · listen
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