the rolling towards the pocket snooker championship thread

this Cope fella looks like the business, he's arguably better than either Robertson or Day, maybe even Selby

currently wasting John Higgins, with some absolutely superb, creative snooker

really tense frame here between dave harold and graeme dott, 70-70 on pink and black, some great safety from both players

ding versus murphy, this is IMPORTANT. Come on future god of sport!

Why do I still think Ronnie's going to hash this up?

Even if he does a Martin Adams and lets Maguire pull level, I'd still back him to win the deciding frame(s). In this form he's overwhelming. I don't think he's as mentally fragile as many people make out, either. It's almost as if he decides when to lose. He doesn't tend to miss pressure pots; when he loses, he lets the opponent rack up huge scores while he plays safeties. This isn't mental fragility, this is him 'just not feeling it'.

He is feeling it today.

The boy done good!
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44369000/jpg/_44369053_selby_203.jpg

Watching him roll slow balls in in the last two frames was just beautiful.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=AUJUEgRZBMY

"Anyone want to give me a nosh? Suck my dick"

lol peter ebdon

God, why did you create a second Higgins, but make him the most *boring* player ever? I hate you, God.

If he's not careful he's getting a capital-letter-filled swear thread of his own. Christ.

boring fucking tosser

That frame was Day's to win you cunt. At least we deserved a decider

What a gobshite

'mon Higgins.

He's not all that bad.

Tournaments That Are So Gonna Be Won By Higgins: A Compendium

Well, he didn't.

Marco-Murphy spent half an hour chasing the pink ball around. Classic!

this is great TV

if indeed not great snooker

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/snooker/7823318.stm

Love this guy

Dude's had more farewell tour(nament)s than The Damned.

Ding takes the fundie!

Selby versus the vague lookalike of a certain Beardsleyesque ILXor is turning into something of a humdinger

comment by supersubag (U7126766)
posted 3 Hours Ago
There is a simple way of bringing snooker popularity to the masses: BRING BACK BIG BREAK!

Q to someone who actually saw Big Break: was it actually any good?

POT AS MANY BALLS AS YOU CAN

And no, it was shit.

comment by Meazza (U7140124)
posted 2 Hours Ago

It's about time World Snooker had a long hard introspective and asked themselves what they've actually done to help snooker over the last 10 years. If they wrote it all down they'd be lucky to get half a side of A4; and that's including a heading in size 18 font. World Snooker strikes me as an organisation lacking in ideas or direction and their rudderless approach has steered snooker on to the rocks.

An easy win would be to drop the dress code restrictions; especially the bow tie. I mean who wears bow ties these days apart from Chubby Brown? There should still be guidelines as you couldn't have a player wearing a dayglo Agassi circa '92 effort and putting other players off. But within reason why not?

The other thing they could do is expand the number of ranking tournaments. If you had a situation like tennis where there are dozens of events, but the ranking points differ drastically for each. It would mean more interest throughout the year, more lower ranked players getting the chance to play in front of an audience instead of the grind of qualifying school all the time and the rankings would be less of a closed shop. As I understand it there are non-ranking tournaments taking place in Europe currently, there are probably quite a few in Asia and maybe even some in Canada. Wherever there’s a tournament allocate some ranking points. More tournaments in more locations would help expand snooker. Of course the bigger tournaments would have the higher ratings and all the big names would be there for them. Obviously tennis is a much bigger sport globally and perhaps the format wouldn’t transfer favourably to snooker, but I think something has to be done about a season that consists of a mere 8 ranking tournaments.

Maybe these ideas would be the death of snooker, maybe not, but something needs done and the tubes in charge at World Snooker don’t look like the ones to do it.

^^^this is pretty much dead on

I suspected as much (re: Big Break)

And yeah, OTM. I think they should also relax the smoking ban for snooker venues, bring the audience closer to the table, and permit heckling.

ALSO, wherever there's a snooker tournament, there should also (in a separate room at the same arena) be a parallel three-cushion billiards tournament (or some other under-exposed cue sport other than trickshot competition), which could briefly capture the TV audience's imagination when flicking onto it via interactive, much like the doubles at Wimbledon, and introduce them to bona fide sports geniuses such as Torbjorn Blomdahl.

Day/Night Snooker games with Floodlights & Pyjamas.

btw i am a stated non-believer in "would smash" but in 2009 i will relax that principle just the once, for Michaela Tabb

http://www.virginmedia.com/images/tabb5.jpghttp://www.virginmedia.com/images/tabb2.jpg

Why does Hendry go on? Why? The man is a shell and has been for about three or four years now.

This really is a heroically, compellingly bad game, with 100% long pot success on both sides O_o

Also unsure about Michaela's ponytail

Glad your would smash policy has been clarified.

And yes, Hendry should give up, he always looks so miserable doesn't he?

His youthful vigour has truly departed now.

Big Break was no worse than any early Saturday night game show nonsense. probably not as good as Bullseye tho.

Epically scrappy, often awful snooker, the right winner but christ Hendry has lost it

lol peter ebdon

― 100 tons of hardrofl beyond zings (Just got offed), Friday, 17 October 2008 00:22 (2 months ago) Bookmark

I HATE JOHN HIGGINS

SO MUCH

That was fab! "We're live, aren't we Hazel?"

12 year ban for Stephen Lee for match fixing - BBC reporting that he avoided a life time ban but when you're 38 and already on the slide, 12 years out of the game should just about do it. Great cueist, could've been a contender.

I'd forgotten about the existence of Quentin Hann. Apparently he was banned for 8 years in 2006 for match fixing. I have no recollection of that at all.

just watched final frame of selby - higgins. one of the great frames

knew I had seen this before

http://www.virginmedia.com/images/tabb2.jpg

http://31.media.tumblr.com/a07215930685f05ccd9e666bba9f709f/tumblr_mobthnv7OM1su2hd3o1_1280.jpg

Awful portrait.

yet it is probably the best painted portrait of a female professional snooker referee ever created :(

I think this one is better

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?s=7e8ea29a8e54a31265fd4eace0a598d9&attachmentid=406908&stc=1&d=1210113576

Jan Verhaas doesn't get objectified like this. Or does he...

Haha that's even worse! Why is her head just floating there? It looks less than the real woman than the first one did.

Ronnie in Jesus mode last night...

Amazed Walden didn't join the crowd after O'Sullivan knocked off that century.

to clap although he could just sat in the arena too.

That was one glorious bit of snooker yesterday afternoon, also enjoyed the presenter dude shiting it about how they were going to fill about three hours of remaining airtime.

Just spent an hour watching Ronnie's exhibition match in China with Pan Xiaoting in pool (9-ball I think) from Christmas-time. He's not playing his hardest, but still fun to see.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PgyAbL02ZA

do I wanna read the comments on that

hmm, weirdly civil. there is hope for you yet, youtube

haha, comments for video 2, where they play each other at snooker, much more what I was expecting

When he first displayed this left-handed ability in the 1996 World Championship against Alain Robidoux, the Canadian accused him of disrespect. O'Sullivan responded that he played better with his left hand than Robidoux could with his right.[243] He was summoned to a disciplinary hearing in response to Robidoux's formal complaint, where he had to prove that he could play to a high level with his left hand. He played three frames of snooker against former world championship runner-up Rex Williams, winning all three. The charge of bringing the game into disrepute was subsequently dropped.[244]

Haha that is great. So is this, also from Robidoux's wikipedia page:

Robidoux reached the semi-finals of the 1997 World Snooker Championship, but subsequently slid rapidly down the rankings.[2] He blamed his decline on the destruction of his favourite cue,[2] which he referred to as "the Eel". The incident occurred after Robidoux returned the handmade cue to its maker – an elderly craftsman in Canada – for repairs. But when the cuemaker saw that the cue's butt had been adorned with the logo of Riley, a leading UK cue manufacturer, he took such grave offence he smashed the cue into pieces and sent the remains back to Robidoux.[2] Several years later, Robidoux was asked whether the passage of time may have eased his anger towards the cue maker; "I want to kill him," was his heartfelt response.

hahaha I found that exact bit & strongly considered putting it here

more from snookipedia

In 1996, Ebdon recorded a version of the David Cassidy song "I Am A Clown"

He does not have to wear a bow tie in professional snooker matches due to medical problems, for which he has a doctor's letter.

Stephen Maguire also has a letter from his mum excusing him from doing cross-country in short sleeves.

was gonna post about the boy cahill, but he's just fucked up winning in about the most awful way possible. deciding frame now. tbf ding was str8 incredible from 11 foul points needed

cahill wins! good lord

he should have won (with his chances), he should have lost (as part of his educational arc), but has still learnt some almighty lessons, good luck to him

Enjoyed that as well - thought it was some late highlights at first.

Yeah that was a great match, from both players - was rooting for Ding for most of his comeback but Cahill's hanging on in the face of all that got me to switch sides for the decider.

So Ronnie nearly made two 147s in a row today...

lol @ "I'm like a born again Christian"

Bingham seems to self destruct atm. 4-4 after him being 4-1 up.

Beautiful match.

The next frame after 4-1 Bingham gave him a few opportunities but then its 3x60 breaks, a century and the 87 at the end, and that pot on the red (when he could've put Stuart back) was top stuff!

Yes that pot was magnificent. Ronnie v composed and 'with it' in the post match interview too.

He's been v with it for a long time now.

Can I say how much I enjoy Hendry's commentary, especially during Ronnie's matches. Never talks too much, just enough and there is nothing too obvious.

Absolutely agree on the latter, he's surprised me in a positive way.

That's good to hear about Ronnie, I've not been following snooker for a while so didn't know.

Its been a boring final - almost the only way to beat Ronnie is to play tactically and get his timing off (sounds cynical but it isn't), then score heavy when he makes mistakes. In the past Higgins was great at this and Selby beat him at the WC like this.

Ding and the likes of Trump aren't. 8-4 right now.

Not so boring now.

mad, mad stuff: 9-9 from 9-4! It was lightning too.

Incredible last hour - Ronnie pulls out a good safety and then took the points well.

Yeah that was good stuff. It was scrappy from both before Trump started getting into gear.

Loved the shots right after the end: Ronnie looked like he'd lost, like he couldn't believe it, whereas Trump was all ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ after a couple of minutes.

cuddly ken, you cunt! she was supposed to win

needed a snooker on pink and black to prevent epicke final frame, got it

you want one loveable ambassador of the game to lose to a woman, proving her right to be in the men's game in the popular opinion, you choose ken, and he fucks it

lol anyway, she played ok and women should be allowed to attempt to qualify always now, should have always been allowed

Women should be allowed to qualify/play in all tournaments really. Might take a few years but all that should flow through to the World championships.

selby with the eeyore celebration again lol

Anyone here bothering with the Crucible this year?

RIP Ronnie, heaven needed an intensely bored and uninterested snooker player

ronnie and ding on the 13th!

lol RIP Shaun Murphy's actually-he's-a-decent-guy rep

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/nov/24/its-not-fair-shaun-murphy-rails-at-amateurs-in-pro-snooker-after-uk-championship-defeat-by-amateur
lmao