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SNOOKER

AND ME

(Or is it Snooker

and  I?)*

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By John James Carty

I had enjoyed playing snooker since I was about twelve years old. I was never a good player; in fact, I was never basically competent even when I grew up and played regularly.

But I found my role without playing the game. I was elected treasurer of the London & Home Counties Snooker Association in 1974. In this way snooker became one of my main occupations from 1974 to 1986.

I became a journalist and editor of snooker magazines and I was a co-promoter of the World Amateur Snooker Championship, sponsored by BCE, in 1984. That was the summit of my official life.

None of this was of any use when I settled in South America in 2004 because snooker doesn’t exist here.

In Latin countries the equivalent sport is ‘billar’ which is a bit like English billiards except that the table is smaller and has no pockets.

Neil Robertson (Australia) World Professional

Snooker Champion 2010

In billar, the only way to score points is to make cannons. That is, to cause the ball that you strike with your cue (the cue ball) to make contact with the other two balls on the table. It is very difficult to play, even at the basic level.

A big 'billar' room  - the Club Colombia in Jerico, Colombia.

Note the American Pool table in the foreground.

Snooker is difficult too – at least it is difficult to play well – but it has a lot more balls on the table, it offers more possibilities to score points, and it is colourful.

It is different from billar or North American pool because it is played on a table that is more or less double the size of a billar or pool table.

In my time in South America I have not written anything about snooker and my few attempts to explain it have not been very successful.

Billar - no pockets

Left: World Amateur Snooker Champion 2009, Alfie Burden (London).

Centre: Dechawat Poomjaeng (Thailand) won the World Amateur

Snooker Championship 2010 in Damascus, Syria. In the final he beat

Pankaj Advani of India (right) 10 - 7.

Ng On Yee (Hong Kong) won the women's

World Snooker Championship 2010 in Syria,

beating Jaique Ip Wan, also of Hong Kong,

5 - 1 in the final.

Women's World Amateur Snooker

Champion 2010, Ng On Yee (Hong Kong)

In 2007 my favourite brain surgeon, and very impressive student, Adriana, came to me for English lessons with her husband Oscar and brother Adolfo (both also surgeons).

She was very keen to improve her English and get a massive score in the TOEFL exam as it was a condition of her taking up a neurological fellowship in Toronto, Canada (she succeeded). Oscar and Adolfo were also keen students of English but they weren’t under the same pressure of time.

The lessons went very well, I thought. Then, in the fourth session, I happened to mention snooker in passing. But Adolfo detained me; he was very interested in this unknown sport and wanted to know more about it.

Of course, like most people, he was fascinated when I mentioned that the top professional snooker players can win millions of pounds sterling (not dollars) in prize money in a year.

I made the mistake of giving Adolfo a brief explanation of snooker. This took about an hour, with diagrams on the board. Oscar showed polite interest but Adriana looked as if she was thinking of quitting the class and walking to Toronto.

Connie Falkiewicz of New Jersey, pictured in 1980, founder of the (non-professional) International Snooker League.

So I very rarely mention snooker now, and in all the English exercises, articles and stories I have written for teaching purposes I have never written about it.

But some of my students here in Medellin, occasionally hearing a very controlled and brief mention of it, suggest that I should write about snooker for my Spanish website readers simply because it is so different. I have resisted this suggestion so far.

Until quite recently snooker was played only in countries that had at some time had a British presence, and of course that’s a lot of countries – especially in Asia. Snooker was in fact invented in a British officers’ mess in India.

Marco Fu (Hong Kong)

Igor Figueiredo (Brazil)

Um site Sinuca em Português: thesnookerplanet.com

The game was unknown in Europe, America, the former Soviet Union and Scandinavia. In all of these places some form of billar or pool was the dominant table sport.

The World Professional Snooker Championship has been played at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, England, since 1977. It receives blanket television coverage from the BBC and this took the game to incredible heights of popularity in Britain.

It also led to another exciting development in the early 1980s. The BBC television signal was so strong that it reached France, Holland, Belgium and Germany. People in these countries started getting interested in this hypnotic game, even if they didn’t know the rules and couldn’t understand all of the commentaries.

As a result, in the last thirty years the game has become very popular in Europe and many European countries now have strong amateur and professional structures.

Bjorn Haneveer (Belgium)

The Asian interest has blossomed at an amazing rate, largely due to the enterprise and drive of one man, Barry Hearn who, with the help of multiple world champion Steve Davis, developed competitive snooker in Thailand, China and all points east.

Spain was one of the first countries to take up playing snooker because of the large numbers of British people who vacation or live there. A bar with a few snooker tables would always do good business in the Spanish tourist towns.

As in other parts of the world, the local boys (always boys in the early days) would become addicted to this foreign game and start to play it. Many of them became very proficient players.

It must be noted that although my level was ‘barely competent’ it was also ‘average’ for most British people on vacation. The local lads knew they could play much better than the casual players they were seeing.

The European countries are now producing champions at every level and of course, in the modern age there is no obstacle for women players, who are progressing very well.

As you can see from videos on http://snooker147blog.com the game quickly becomes compulsive for the spectator. You don’t need to be able to play it and you learn the basic rules very quickly.

The BBC statistics – and simple observation – showed that women of all ages were a big proportion of the television audience. Women have been big ticket buyers for live competitions since the seventies.

The appeal of live tournament snooker is that it is a fascinating combination of high tension and great skill played in a relaxed and quiet atmosphere.

Thirty years ago I predicted some things about snooker that came to pass. I predict now that Latin America will produce champions of the future through the influence of sites like snooker147blog.com.

There are other opportunities to study snooker through videos – there are hundreds available on the internet. Enthusiastic future champions can develop their skills by visiting the UK, where most snooker rooms are concentrated.

For promising young stars in South America a trip to Canada might be cheaper and more realistic. Canada has a former world champion in Cliff Thorburn CM (1980) and many tournament players.

Many of today’s professional snooker players were made into champions by parental sacrifice and financial support. Even today, converting a talented youngster into a champion comes at a more modest cost than in, for example, golf, tennis or motor racing. And, as an English teacher, I can hardly avoid mentioning that life in snooker makes you fluent in English!

I don’t predict that snooker will become a big sport for people to play in South America – the economics are against it because the tables are so big and a good salon would use a lot of space.

Rodney Coggins of Ireland

made a maximum

147 break competing

in the World Amateur

Snooker Championship,

Damascus,Syria,

December 2010

But Brazil is a leading country in the snooker business because Brazilian wood is frequently used in the making of the best snooker tables.

Snooker has not become popular in the USA, where pool is preferred. There are many reasons for this and it is unlikely that the Americans will change their habits. But some of the best U.S. players have done well in professional snooker in Europe.

In the United States pool is a game to play at home and the size of a pool table makes this a practical choice. However, if you want to buy a snooker table for your home you will need a lot of space. Prices start at about US$4.000 plus transport from wherever it is made. That’s cheaper than buying a golf course, isn’t it?

*HEADLINE: THE ANSWER is simple –

it depends on whether “snooker and I” are the subject of the verb (the person or thing doing the action) or the object of the verb (the recipient/victim/object of the action).

For example:

“Snooker and I have been around for a long time.” Correct.

“The Crucible Theatre was very good for snooker and me.” Correct.

Many people are tempted to say “and I” every time because they think “and I” sounds polite and therefore better. This is a mistake. If you are not the person doing the action you must be “me”.

For example, “He spoke to Charles and me,” is correct.

You can always test this by omitting the other person or thing, So:

“He spoke to Charles and I.” Is obviously wrong because if you take away “Charles” you are saying, “He spoke to I,” which is very bad English.

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