Snooker is played on a table twelve feet by six — considerably larger than an American pool table — with fifteen red balls, six colours and a white cue ball. Players pot a red, then a colour, then another red, alternating, building a break.
Where it came from
It was invented in 1875 in Jabalpur, India, by British army officers of the Devonshire Regiment looking for a variation on billiards. Colonel Sir Neville Chamberlain — not the prime minister — is generally credited with formalising it.
The name comes from army slang. A snooker was a first-year cadet at Woolwich, and the word was applied by an officer to a fellow player who had missed an easy shot. To be snookered — unable to hit the target ball directly because another is in the way — has since entered general English for being stuck in an impossible position.
The scoring
Reds are worth one. The colours are yellow (2), green (3), brown (4), blue (5), pink (6) and black (7). A player pots a red, then any colour — which is returned to its spot — then another red, and so on. When the reds are gone, the colours are potted in ascending order and stay down.
The maximum possible break is 147: fifteen reds each followed by a black, then all six colours. It is snooker’s perfect game, and fewer than 200 have been made in professional competition.
Why Britain watches it
Snooker’s television popularity is an accident of technology. The game is played with coloured balls, and it became compelling the moment British households acquired colour televisions in the late 1970s. The BBC programme that showcased it was even called Pot Black, and the commentator Ted Lowe’s line — “and for those of you watching in black and white, the pink is next to the green” — is one of the most quoted in British broadcasting.
The 1985 final
The defining moment. Dennis Taylor against Steve Davis in the World Championship final went to the final frame and then the final black. Taylor potted it at 12.23am to win 18-17, and turned to the camera wagging his finger.
18.5 million people were watching — past midnight, on a Sunday, on BBC Two. It remains the largest post-midnight television audience in British history and the biggest ever for BBC Two.
The Crucible
The World Championship has been held at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield since 1977, and the venue is unusually small — around 980 seats, with the audience close enough to hear a cue strike. Players walk out through a corridor to a curtain, and the seventeen-day tournament ends with a final played over two days.
The “Crucible curse” holds that no first-time world champion has ever successfully defended the title there. It has held since 1977.
The players
Snooker has produced a run of genuinely distinctive figures: Alex “Hurricane” Higgins, chaotic and brilliant; Steve Davis, relentlessly accurate and nicknamed “Interesting” as a joke about his manner; Stephen Hendry, seven times champion; and Ronnie O’Sullivan, widely regarded as the most naturally gifted player the sport has produced, who once made a 147 in five minutes and eight seconds.
Where the game is now
British audiences remain substantial, and the sport’s commercial future is increasingly in China, where it is enormously popular and where several leading players now come from. Ding Junhui’s success from the mid-2000s transformed the game’s reach.