![]() After these colours were used, more players could enter by adding coloured balls with a cross or a spot. The range of colours included white, red, yellow, green and brown with blue, pink and black coming at a later date. To differentiate between each player’s ball, they were often numbered and stained with a dye. Up to a dozen players could be involved in a game at any one time, each with their own cue and ball playing in a fixed rotation. The earliest version of pocket billiards was played with only two balls and the players would each take a ball and try to pot the other. Another obstacle/target had also been added to the table in the form of pockets, giving rise to pocket billiards. There were many variations of the game by this time with some making use of obstructions and targets whilst others relied on the table cushions alone, such as carom billiards. By the early 18th century indoor billiards was a favoured past time of the French nobility and English gentry.īy the 19th century the cue had developed into the form of which it is known today aided by advances in technologies come about during the Industrial Revolution. Played as an outdoor lawn game similar to croquet, it eventually moved indoors and onto a wooden table with green cloth to resemble grass on which it had been previously played. The earliest recorded playing of a recognisable form of billiards was in France in the 1340s. Pool, more formally known as pocket billiards, is the umbrella term for a number of cue sports and games played on a six-pocket pool table, including eight-ball, nine-ball and straight pool. Read more about: Sport The 10 Greatest Snooker Players of All Time ![]() Snooker clubs were opening up all over the country and sponsors rushed to invest in the new popular sport.Īlthough a ban on tobacco advertising in sport during the 2000s initially reduced the number of events and sponsorship money, the World Snooker Tour has bounced back considerably since 2010, when sports promoter Barry Hearn acquired a controlling interest in snooker's commercial arm -World Snooker Limited. ![]() With the emergence of stars such as Dennis Taylor, Ray Reardon, Steve Davis and Alex “Hurricane” Higgins, the final of the World Snooker Championships was soon drawing in millions of viewers worldwide and had found a new permanent home at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield. By the 1930s, snooker had overtaken billiards as the most popular cue sport in the UK.Īfter a short slump in popularity during the 1950s, Snooker was put back on the map with the introduction of Pot Black in 1969, a BBC television series of annual snooker tournaments shown in colour. Davis won the Professional Snooker Championship (which later became the World Snooker Championship) for 15 consecutive years and was instrumental in helping to grow the popularity of the game. The first important professional event took place in 1927 and was won by Joe Davis, the first snooker superstar. Although it took many years before the game became widely played, by the end of the 19th century the manufacturers of billiards equipment had realised the commercial potential of snooker.ġ916 saw the first official snooker competition take place, which was the English Amateur Championships. After enquiring about the rules of snooker, Roberts decided he would introduce the game back in England. In 1885, John Roberts, the then British Billiards Champion, visited India and met with Chamberlain during a dinner with the Maharajah of Cooch Behar. ![]() Having heard that rookie cadets studying at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich were given the slang-term ‘snookers’, Chamberlain observed that all those present playing this new version of black pool were ‘snookers at the game’ and the name immediately stuck. Whilst experimenting with the existing game of black pool (a form of billiards), which consisted of 15 red balls and one black ball, Chamberlain threw down additional coloured balls and a new game was born. It was in the officers' mess of the British Army’s 11th Devonshire Regiment stationed in the Indian town of Jabalpur (Jubbulpore as it was then known) in 1875 that lieutenant Neville Francis Fitzgerald Chamberlain created the game of snooker. ![]()
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