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Re: Tied frame

Postby SnookerFan

Dan-cat wrote:I made it up.

:-D


Ah, wish you hadn't said that.

For once, I spotted one of your jokes. What happens if nobody scored foul points?

It seemed unlikely.

Re: Tied frame

Postby rekoons

Dan-cat wrote:I made it up.

:-D


Damn you Dan-cat! :grrr:

I really did think you were pulling my leg and was about to call BS, but wasn't gonna question your immeasurble wisdom!

Now I know better <laugh>

Re: Tied frame

Postby Dan-cat

rekoons wrote:
Dan-cat wrote:I made it up.

:-D


Damn you Dan-cat! :grrr:

I really did think you were pulling my leg and was about to call BS, but wasn't gonna question your immeasurble wisdom!

Now I know better <laugh>


Hahahah. I couldn't resist. I think I'd just got back from a very agreeable lunch and was a few beers down. When I typed it out it sounded so plausible!

Here's a different viewpoint on the playing-on-for-snookers.

If there's only one or two needed with a few colours left my mate Steve and I usually play on for a few minutes. I love it. The pleasure I get from laying a three cushion snooker is as much as potting a long ball. It's nerve-wracking and thrilling being stuck in a snooker in a frame you should have won. In club games it's so easy to go in-off at this stage also. I've won loads of frames this way, needing one or two snookers. Is snooker just about potting balls? I don't think so.

This goes for normal safeties too. I'm a mad attacking player, I tend to go for everything, but if there's no shot on (or the only shot on is kamikaze) the pleasure derived from finding the baulk cushion is the same as making a tricky pot. I've studied Ronnie's safety game very closely in recent years and he never plays a safety shot plain ball. He uses side on every shot to widen the angle and adopting this has meant I will find the baulk cushion or thereabouts 3 or 4 times out of 5. It was something Hendry said while commentating that alerted me to this 'Ronnie always has something on the cue ball when he plays safe, he never plays plain ball.') Now when I think about how I used to play safe it seems so amateur.

Ace - yes I remember Gladstones well. One of my first watering holes. In fact, the first place I got properly tanked (was sick on the bus home. Ugh.) I was slightly in love with the landlord's daughter. Well, we all were. She was by far the hottest girl in school.

When I attended my high school reunion five years ago (we were all 40) I hung out with her and she told me she now works for Pfizer. Ironic, as in her younger days there would have been no requirement for that company's wares (not that it existed then.) I remember remarking to her that I'd had a fairly sh*t time at that school being verbally bullied about my parents being divorced (I was the only kid in school who had a stepdad. Crazy now when you think of the divorce rates.) I remarked that she always seemed so happy and 'floated by on a bed of glamour.' She said to me that it was all a front, she had an awful time also, being bullied by older girls. Damn - a real lesson in you never know what's on the other side. I came back from that reunion like a huge weight had been lifted from me. Other people had a sh*t time at school also? Who knew.

I don't remember a snooker table at Gladstones though!! That must have been before my time.

Re: Tied frame

Postby Badsnookerplayer

On the scoreboard issue, I have never seen one of these old scoreboards with a star on it. From a description of a snooker variation called 'Life Pool'

The other game was Life Pool, which employed various coloured balls, depending on the number of players. Each player would have his own cue and object ball. The following player’s object ball would be the previous player’s cue ball. When the cue ball was potted, a ‘life’ was lost, which would be registered on the score board by hiding one of three stars by means of a sliding shutter which can be found on old marking boards today. An agreed stake would then be placed into the ‘pool’

I found this beauty on ebay - Aces you need to get that in the club. I wonder what the colour descriptions are for?
https://www.ebay.co.uk/i/113627404517?chn=ps

Re: Tied frame

Postby acesinc

Dan-cat wrote:...
I don't remember a snooker table at Gladstones though!! That must have been before my time.


Dan, I think your head was muddled in a fog for your bird. Either that or Gladstone's went downhill quickly after my departure. When I arrived early '85, there was one table, 3/4 size, set up in the front window, left of the entry. About a year later, they cleared out some tables and booths and set up a FULL SIZE alongside the bar also on the left (but with full cue clearance all 'round, plenty o' space for it). Then I left in late '87. It was Hammerain Club for serious snooker and a bit of drink, or Gladstone's for serious drink and a bit of snooker. Wonderful place for a pub lunch and rewind after a long 12 hour night shift.

:chin:

On second thought, maybe that 3/4 size was a museum piece before my arrival. But then I pumped so many 50 p. into the light that they found it to be quite profitable and set up the full size so now I could drop more coins to keep the light blazing. Revenues must have gone down considerably when I left...

rofl

Re: Tied frame

Postby acesinc

Badsnookerplayer wrote:On the scoreboard issue, I have never seen one of these old scoreboards with a star on it. From a description of a snooker variation called 'Life Pool'

The other game was Life Pool, which employed various coloured balls, depending on the number of players. Each player would have his own cue and object ball. The following player’s object ball would be the previous player’s cue ball. When the cue ball was potted, a ‘life’ was lost, which would be registered on the score board by hiding one of three stars by means of a sliding shutter which can be found on old marking boards today. An agreed stake would then be placed into the ‘pool’

I found this beauty on ebay - Aces you need to get that in the club. I wonder what the colour descriptions are for?
https://www.ebay.co.uk/i/113627404517?chn=ps



If only I were Jeff Bezos.....I would buy this old scoreboard and launch it in my rocket to track the score on the billiards table that I had set up on the Moon! That is a beauty!

You have touched on a topic of considerable interest to me here. Everyone on the Island knows Snooker quite well but few know (or probably much care) about the history of the Game and how it has gotten to be the way that it is today. I am not expert at all as there is too much else in one's life to occupy limited time, but I have delved a little bit into the history of Snooker and connected a few dots as to how Colonel Sir Neville Chamberlain of the Devonshire regiment (not the Prime Minister) came to "invent" Snooker in 1875.

And Life Pool is very much a part of that story. Here is my understanding of it....

English Billiards is the grand-daddy of the English games of course. English Billiards is a head-to-head affair between two players using two White balls (referred to as "White" and "Spot" or "Spot White" for the small identifying spot on it). But the larger recreation of billiards in general was more social than just two players. Like a game of cards, there could be a number of bodies present in the pub or parlour looking to get into the "pool" of wagers and swing the cue. And so there was Life Pool.

A hundred years before the first video game arrived to bless a player with three lives to reincarnate after they are "killed" by a mortal combatant of some sort, it was the billiard players who invented this whole idea of "three lives" in the first place. Each player had his own cue ball. Very sadly, back in those days, the balls were mined from the ivory of the tusks of majestic elephants and so only available in the colour of ivory white. To identify different balls, they could be stained with a variety of pigments but unlike today's composition ball with the colouring agent blended directly into the material, the ivory balls would be only temporarily stained as needed. And so for Life Pool, each player who had paid into the Pool would have his own colour for his cue ball (if you look closely, the second "WHITE" to the bottom right, it is actually " · WHITE"). There could be any number of players up to the maximum of eight as shown on the board. So your first pay in bought you 3 "lives". The players would be introduced to the game from in hand in the order of colours on the board. I am not certain of exact rules but it would seem logical to me that no potting would be allowed until all players cue balls had been entered on the surface. So as a Snooker player, you can probably see the benefit of purposely leaving your own cue ball in a safe position when you were not confident to pot another's. As the striker would go along and pot the others' cue balls, the potted ball's owner would lose one life and hold it in hand until it was their turn again to play from in hand. Each loss of life would slide your colour board thus revealing how many times you had "died" so far. After 3 "deaths", you are out so you have lost your money paid into the Pool. Except, depending on the venue and the other players in the game, there may be the option of buying your way back in to more "lives"..... Just like today's Betfred, this was about gambling after all, so the rules of the game might allow you to pay more into the Pool and buy an additional life or lives. That is what the little Star of David looking slider is for. After the 3 circles are exposed, you are DEAD unless the rules of this particular game allow you to pay in more money, then you would slide the Star of David over if/when you lose those extra "lives".

Last one alive gets all the money in the Pool.



And, obviously, from there, Life Pool developed into Black Pool, which then evolved into Snooker's Pool, eventually becoming the game we lovingly call Snooker today.


And to repeat the disclaimer, I am not an expert about this so it is very likely that I have some details of the game of Life Pool incorrect so for that, I apologize. To have at least some vague understanding of what came before us is better than to have no understanding at all.

Re: Tied frame

Postby Badsnookerplayer

That's interesting Aces. I had understood that 'pool' comes from the act of pooling money but not the details of the old games that predate snooker. Thanks for shedding some light.

One thing you might be interested in is this translation of Mingaud's book on applying sidespin. I think he was an early adopter of leather tips (as opposed to wood) and one of the first to play with screw and side. The book far predates snooker of course:

https://books.google.co.uk/books/reader ... &q&f=false

Two questions that occurred to me that you may be able to answer.

i) I am sure I have memories of one player being referred to as 'spot' many years ago. Probably old boys playing billiards? Any ideas on that one? Was one cue ball spotted?

ii) The popularity of snooker in Canada and Australia - why? My best guess would be that lots of Aussies and Canadians passed through Britain in the First World War and may have taken back an interest in the game. But if this is the case, why did the many Americans who came through not pick the game up? My theory may be way off.

Cheers!