Snooker: Changes You’d Like To See

Don’t like the 128 flat draw. It was introduced to try to establish a more level playing field but it’s actually penalised the lowest ranked players because it means they have to play a top 16 player in the first round of every tournament.

badtemperedcyril wrote:UK - restore to its former glory...
Early rounds best of 11
Top 16 come in at Last 64
Last 32,16,QF,SF best of 17 (8,9)
Final best of 33 (8,8,8,9)

Post covid - best of 19 for all WC qualifying rounds MUST be restored.

Sort the camera work out! I want to see a player’s stance and cue action - i.e. the complete stroke. By constantly going to the roving cameras you don’t see any technique except the “face on” angle, which doesn’t tell much about how a player is cueing.

Good point this. They should use a wide shot more often. My other pet hate is how the camera will often follow the ball into the pocket... We don't want to see this, we want to see where the white is going, how the positional shot has been played....we want to see the object ball and the cue ball.

badtemperedcyril wrote:UK - restore to its former glory...
Early rounds best of 11
Top 16 come in at Last 64
Last 32,16,QF,SF best of 17 (8,9)
Final best of 33 (8,8,8,9)

Post covid - best of 19 for all WC qualifying rounds MUST be restored.

Sort the camera work out! I want to see a player’s stance and cue action - i.e. the complete stroke. By constantly going to the roving cameras you don’t see any technique except the “face on” angle, which doesn’t tell much about how a player is cueing.

I found the camera work quite irritating at times yesterday actually. As soon as the pot went in, they'd start showing a replay of it. I don't want to see that now, I've literally just seen the red go in a moment ago. I want to know where the white is going!

The guys in the tv room deciding which camera to select don’t understand snooker. You are absolutely right about the camera following the object ball into the pocket. Even the standard camera of the table gets too close in at times. You should be able to see the players complete stance, not just his (or her) bridge hand.

The "foul and a miss" rule should be abolished

I've noticed a lot of times, the camera fixes on the pocket that they think a player intends to play in, only for the player to do something completely different. (Playing a safety for example.)

You then miss what the player has done because the cameraman has zoomed in on the wrong part of the table.

Rather than the winner getting a tour place, the four semi finalists from African, American and Oceanian Championsips should get all expenses paid trips to q school.
Open up 3 more q school qualifying places.

chengdufan wrote:Rather than the winner getting a tour place, the four semi finalists from African, American and Oceanian Championsips should get all expenses paid trips to q school.
Open up 3 more q school qualifying places.

A free trip to the UK would be a great incentive to get people playing in those regions. And snookerwise, the players would learn a lot more from competing closer to their level in q school than they would from 2 years of getting battered on tour or not being able to enter events.

Years ago, the WPBSA “sponsored” national professional championships with a guaranteed first prize of £1,000. So therefore, Australia, Canada, South Africa, Ireland as well as the four home nations each had their own Championship. As soon as they stopped the funding these events ceased.

badtemperedcyril wrote:Years ago, the WPBSA “sponsored” national professional championships with a guaranteed first prize of £1,000. So therefore, Australia, Canada, South Africa, Ireland as well as the four home nations each had their own Championship. As soon as they stopped the funding these events ceased.

I remember those National championships; I didn't realise at the time that they were subsidised by the WPBSA, although the Canadian Championship has continued without a break (no pun intended) - the last two champions were Bob Chaperon and Brady Gollan, so it may well be struggling to attract younger players

https://www.snookercanada.ca/snooker-10 ... champions/

Iranu wrote:

Johnny Bravo wrote:The "foul and a miss" rule should be abolished

No

Agree, the rule can often be a reward for the last player at the table having played a great shot, much more so than a lucky shot

Iranu wrote:

badtemperedcyril wrote:The guys in the tv room deciding which camera to select don’t understand snooker. You are absolutely right about the camera following the object ball into the pocket. Even the standard camera of the table gets too close in at times. You should be able to see the players complete stance, not just his (or her) bridge hand.

I don’t know, I think the camera work would be a lot worse if the producers didn’t understand snooker.

In fact, you could see the difference in the Seniors where I believe they gave less experienced people an opportunity to learn the ropes.

I’m not bothered about seeing the stance personally (we get enough shots of this throughout the match without needing to see it on the top-down view) but this might be dictated by venues in some instances anyway, and how far they can get the camera etc.

Can you imagine in golf, if they only showed the ball and head of the club and not the players body?


I recently watched Hendry in the Seniors and was very keen to see what modifications he'd made to his cue action. When he was in his pomp in the 90's he had a short, crisp action but in the 00's when he started tinkering with it and working with coaches, he changed to a longer, flowing cueing action with a long pause on the final back swing. I personally never liked it and thought it made his long potting unreliable and vulnerable under pressure. That's not really the issue here though... On almost every shot, when he started to address the ball and start his waggles, they moved to the roving camera by the top pocket (a face on shot), making it impossible to see his cue action.

SnookerEd25 wrote:

badtemperedcyril wrote:Years ago, the WPBSA “sponsored” national professional championships with a guaranteed first prize of £1,000. So therefore, Australia, Canada, South Africa, Ireland as well as the four home nations each had their own Championship. As soon as they stopped the funding these events ceased.

I remember those National championships; I didn't realise at the time that they were subsidised by the WPBSA, although the Canadian Championship has continued without a break (no pun intended) - the last two champions were Bob Chaperon and Brady Gollan, so it may well be struggling to attract younger players

https://www.snookercanada.ca/snooker-10 ... champions/

That's an Canadian Amateur Championship though.

Take a look at these links to the South African, Australian and Canadian Professional Championships
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Afr ... ampionship
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia ... ampionship
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_ ... ampionship

All changed now of course. The term "professional" doesn't really exist. You're either on the Main Tour or you're not.

Ah, my mistake. Thanks for posting, Cyril

Nice on Cyrille.

SnookerFan wrote:Nice on Cyrille.

Regis

Iranu wrote:

badtemperedcyril wrote:Can you imagine in golf, if they only showed the ball and head of the club and not the players body?


I recently watched Hendry in the Seniors and was very keen to see what modifications he'd made to his cue action. When he was in his pomp in the 90's he had a short, crisp action but in the 00's when he started tinkering with it and working with coaches, he changed to a longer, flowing cueing action with a long pause on the final back swing. I personally never liked it and thought it made his long potting unreliable and vulnerable under pressure. That's not really the issue here though... On almost every shot, when he started to address the ball and start his waggles, they moved to the roving camera by the top pocket (a face on shot), making it impossible to see his cue action.

Well I don’t give a rubbish about golf so I wouldn’t really care. I also don’t think it’s the best comparison. That would be more akin to only showing the tip of the cue and the cue ball. In snooker you CAN see players’ stances regularly throughout a match if not every time. There are also legitimate reasons to switch to roving cameras.

As I said, the Seniors apparently had apprentices/more junior people operating the cameras and judging by the coverage controlling the TV room as well so it wasn’t really a typical tournament in terms of coverage. As I say, you usually get multiple opportunities in a match to see a player’s stance even if it’s not in view on the top-down camera (which it usually is for many shots).

Now you know how I feel with the constant tennis comparisons.

Both Tennis and Golf are great. Nothing beats Snooker though.

Iranu wrote:

Johnny Bravo wrote:The "foul and a miss" rule should be abolished

No

Yes, it's a garbage rule that should be replaced with the foul rule from pool, meaning ball in hand like they have at the Shootout.

Iranu wrote:Ball in hand is fine for pool but it’s way too big a punishment in snooker for just failing to get out of a snooker.

How is it too big a punishment in snooker compared to pool ?!??
In pool, ball in hand means you loose the frame 99% of the time, that is definitely not the case with snooker.

Iranu wrote: You’d just end up with players hit-and-hoping every time because the reward of looking for a good escape is way less than the risk of missing it.

Same thing happens in pool, yet plenty of top pros still go for a good escape.

Iranu wrote:Pool’s a completely different game with different priorities. You can also lose many frames from your opponent breaking off, potting a ball and then not missing, in pool. Snooker’s not that kind of sport so it shouldn’t be treated as such.

If one were to import the free ball rule from pool, they'd also need to import the snooker rule from pool, meaning you can't just tuck in behind a ball leaving your opponent snookered so that you can weep the rewards of a free ball/ball in hand. In pool, after the white makes contact with the object ball, either the white or the object ball must make contact with a rail. That way, getting a snooker is a lot harder.

Iranu wrote:Plus, you’re not playing to hit the same ball that your opponent can pot, so it’s a completely different situation.

Yes you are. In rotation games (9 ball, 10 ball, etc) you are doing just that.

Iranu wrote:You’re just trying to turn snooker into another form of pool

No I'm not, I'm just saying we should import an excellent rule from pool to replace a garbage rule in snooker.
Snooker will still be different as a game in some respect.
The foul and a miss rule is extremely idiotic and can't be applied in real life.

Ball in hand after a foul would be a garbage rule in snooker.

I do agree the foul & a miss rule needs to be looked at, but this is not the answer.