Just as a more general point, not only is the shot you outline here ridiculously hard and carrying very slim rewards (if any), it is a shot that out of a forum full of good players, two highly experienced commentators who have been playing and analysing the game probably longer than either of us have been alive, and one of the best players to ever pick up a cue, none even consider your choice of shot as even a remote possibility.

The closest we ever get is Ronnie reaching vaguely over from the right hand side of the table to see if he could cue it with his hand, but quickly dismisses any kind of shot along these lines when he sees he can't (as I've said over and over in this thread - no even semi skilled player would even consider this shot with a spider and extension unless there was literally no other mathematical way out). this would worry me as much as the analysis I've done here if not more so unless you are shipping world championships regularly and know something all these other people don't.

If you clip it thin it's still doable but basically a moot point as you admit in your next point as the pot from there is so easy.


Seriously I cannot believe you have ever played with a rest over a ball at this distance if you think this is even remotely doable - your margins of error on this sort of shot are HUGE. A foot is pretty standard margin of miss even for a top player here - hence the reason neither O'Sullivan or the commentators even consider this shot with an extended rest/spider.


See the diagram.

Watch the video and look at it from a few angles if you still don't believe the line I drew in the diagram (and see the fact that Ronnie/commentators never even look at this shot with a rest, despite Ronnie looking briefly to see if he can get over for it with his hand).

It doesn't have 100% loss rate - playing from the baulk cushion over table distance is very hard for any player pretty much regardless of ball position. Your shot basically has an instant 95-99% loss rate, the one in the solution at absolute worst leaves you 50/50 in a safety battle (and even this is extremely generous - the real line here if tight on the baulk line is probably around 66% in Ronnie's favour if not more - even for a player of Higgin's standard. It is just so hard judging angle and pace when only able to hit the top of the ball without your hand on the table).

Even if completely snookered there is plenty of play left with those reds on the bottom cushion so easy to just roll up to, and any mistake by Higgins on the line you drew up (which will often happen) leaves both easy safety shots in many cases, as well as some pots in others - hardly 100% to end the game by any means.

He did with the cue ball very far down the table and close to the red, which is incomparable for obvious reasons.

Well of course they don't, but that just goes to what I've been saying for years; that snooker players don't know very much about the 'moving' aspects of billiard games. That's a lot of why they're so easy to beat playing pool

I cannot believe you have ever played snooker to even a vague amateur level if you truly think that:

a) this is even close to a positive EV shot on a regulation snooker table considering the other options and consequences if you misjudge it even slightly (which you will 99% of the time),

b) that O'Sullivan is '100% to lose this frame' leaving Higgins tight on the baulk cushion,

c) and the quoted statement.

a) and b) in particular are such basic and obvious errors that its difficult to know where to begin with any other analysis. It's like starting a hand analysis in poker with 'Oh well I had 74o UTG so I shoved 200 big blinds playing deep 9 handed because there was this tight player in the big blind'. Any later thoughts on player type or discussion is largely meaningless as the basics behind what you are saying is so obviously wrong that any other considerations are moot (and in this case, even the later considerations are obiously wrong due to the number of shots you leave in all spots bar 2 square inches of space that you have to hit perfectly over a distance of about 12ft, cueing with a spider over a touching ball, off of two cushions - a shot no one can hit consistently enough to make it right).

If what you are saying is true, it would have long been incorporated into snooker long ago - there is too much money at stake there for them not too. All pool is laughably small fry compared to what snooker players can earn, and the ability to hit these sort of shots would give any player a huge edge over everyone else.

The reality of this shot is that no player on earth can get close to it enough to make it right - I'll happily put my money where my mouth is and prop bet any player on the planet at even money that they cant your shot in this setup first attempt (and anywhere you leave it before you hit you lose that visit, are snookered even worse, or give away a free ball, so you have to hit it first try).

I'm done with this discussion as it is bordering ridiculous at this point. PM if you are in London/England and want to set up any props on what I have said itt.

Because the track record of snooker players is so good playing pool?

There is no truly +EV shot from here in my opinion. We're grasping at straws. That's why we have to get creative.

Well it's fair enough that you may not lose the frame 100% of the time from being by the yellow, clearly I misspoke saying that. However, you are for sure going to take BY FAR the worst of it. Maybe not against people you're used to playing, but this is John Higgins we're talking about AND he's got a target the size of New Jersey to land the cue ball in where you're in absolute jail. No idea how you can possibly think it's a good idea to leave him there. It's the equivalent of trying to win a fight against Mike Tyson by hoping he breaks his hand on your face.

Well it's hard to have a discussion with someone who seems to obviously already know everything there is to know about the game so I guess you're right, it is ridiculous to continue.

Meanwhile I don't live in England so we can forget about prop bets. Instead I think what you should do is go to your local club and try the shot tonight for yourself. I'd almost lay a price that even you can execute it after just a few attempts. Who knows, as impossible as it seems, you might even learn something.

There is only one adequate example of a player that has moved from snooker to pool in totality (the only example where it was worth the money doing so), and her name is Allison Fisher, and yes, she destroyed the entire player base like it was nothing. There are other solid examples of snooker players who did well in pool, Mark Selby won the smaller size table 8 ball World Championship, Quntin Hann (although a cheat and never a great snooker player), did well all over in the US, Steve Davis did well both in the Mosconi cup as well as some other events, as did Tony Drago, who won the masters.

The track record of snooker players playing pool is very good in the few cases where players have ever been bothered to even vaguely turn their attention to it. In the one adequate case we have of someone completely turning to pool, she destroyed the entire player base and made them look laughably poor. However, what's the track record of pool players on the snooker table looking like? As far as I can see no pool player has ever even come close to breaking into the top 100 snooker players, something more than worth there time to do so considering the huge extra sums of money involved.


Set this shot up with the cue tight on the cushion or watch how poorly even the greats of the game play shots from these positions. That fact you use an analogy like the one you do just shows how poorly you seem to understand these spots - it's not even close to it and no good player would ever argue this.
I don't know 'everything' there is to know about the game, but I certainly know more than someone who ever thinks that this is a good shot, that you magically lose by just giving Higgins a very hard safety shot and have to take on a suicidally hard all or nothing shot instead, that snooker players are historically rubbish at pool, or that snooker players fail to understand some grand extra concept that all pool players hiking round the country world scraping a pittance out of a dead game do when historically whenever snooker players turn their attention to pool even briefly they destroy the game.

I have played out of hundreds of spots like this, watched thousands of competitive and money matches between pros featuring shots like this, and for these reasons can safely say that this shot is insane. Just go and set it up and see for yourself, or find even a half decent snooker payer and ask them their thoughts on it.

Did not mean to respond again but the snooker track record thing was too tilting to not respond too

Hold on you guys, I'll go make myself some pop corn.

OK, in all seriousness, this is getting derailed from snooker discussion into personal attacks. Neither side is going to give in and though it would be amusing to see Wamy up the ante by posting a video of him making his shot, it really wouldn't help matters much. I don't know much about snooker but I do know about human competitive nature. Neither of you are going to change the other's mind and neither are going to concede due to losing face. So let's just stop posting in this thread for a while.

It's the other way around, I'm not the one arguing in favour of anything very hard to do. I would actually be more than curious to see Dino set this up and play it on a full size snooker table even with the luxury of multiple takes to hide how many shots it takes to get it right etc and then post the video.

Bridging over two balls onto a white basically touching one of the balls with a spider/swan neck and extended cue over this distance, and then having to stroke the ball perfectly - compensating for the top spin you are forced to put on with such a bridge and not giving any accidental side on the ball - and then hitting two cushions perfect with the correct pace to finish in an area with about 2inches margin of error over 12+ft of cue ball travelling distance is such a low percentage shot that I doubt anyone outside of a few select players could hit this shot right at all, even with a huge number of takes/attempts.

The reason this is so tilting (and any even vaguely good snooker player will back up what I'm saying here pretty much 100%) is that the ins and outs of even considering playing such a shot (which is why no one either in this thread, in that arena, or in that commentary box even considered it for a second) contain such fundamental errors on so many levels that is pretty much insane to even be arguing passionately about it unless their has been some sudden and hidden paradigm shift in snooker that only Dino knows about.

I've offered to prop this shot numerous times in this thread so it's not like I'm even hiding anything or just arguing for the sake of it/last wording - I'm more than happy to put my money where my mouth is on this point. There are plenty of very high grade snooker players in England who should be chomping at the bit to take this bet if what is being argued here is correct (but it's not, so I'm not holding my breath).

Last post from me itt as this is making my brain melt. I'll happily back up anything I have said itt with bets to anyone who wants to, and until the point we could ever set this up (WSOPE anyone?), I guess we will have to agree to disagree and maybe wait for some other opinions/views to show up.

Sorry if this seems to have got down to the level of personal attacks - was never meant to be the case and I most certainly have nothing against Dino, just very strongly disagree with a lot of stuff that has been said.

Well clearly this discussion is devolving but you're right about Allison. However, she also happened to play on a tour where 3/4 of the players can't even run a rack so it's hardly analogous. And sure there have been some other anomalies where snooker players have put together some good matches at pool, but then I could also point out that Efren Reyes has beaten both Ronnie O'Sullivan and Jimmy White, not to mention Kirk Stevens, for money playing even snooker, and even ran a few centuries while doing so to boot (with a pool cue I might add). Big deal.

Because when it comes to REAL matches, well Darren Appleton is actually probably the best you have in the UK right now at pool and he got himself completely destroyed when he matched up with Dennis Hatch, basically a mid-range pro, in a real match - a race to 100 games. In fact the best European you have is probably Mika, and he also got himself slaughtered when he tried the same format against Shane. I'm sure if anyone else in the world of snooker (or probably anyone in Europe) wants a shot in such a match against the likes of Shane Van Boenig, Alex Pagulayan, Francisco Bustamante, or Dennis Orcullo they could win themselves at least 100K and maybe more. You can even go first if you want.

Bottom line, snooker players get beat when they play pool, and it's not because they lack for shooting ability. In fact they can out-pot just about all the American and Filipino players by an order of magnitude. Therefore the missing skills must be elsewhere, and that leaves the break (clearly) and the snooker players' abilities at defense and position play. The games are worlds apart when it comes to that aspect, and many pool players also grow up playing a lot of games like bank pool and one pocket that involve world of safety and tactical play that ingrain shots and thinking styles that snooker players will just never see or consider. You won't believe me of course, but it's true.

Well again you must not be paying attention because I am basing my whole thought process on the fact that you are NOT bridging over two balls, but that you have relatively clear cueing at the upper left hand quadrant of the cueball. Obviously if you're totally treetopped over the two reds you can't even reach the freakin' shot without standing on a chair, so please give me just a little credit, would you?

And the reason it's so tilting for me is that you're advocating a shot that a) may not even be on and b) puts you in a losing position anyways. For sure it gets you out of the trap you're in, but only to land in a frying pan anyways. Now I'm not sure why you think that's a good solution because it isn't, and I suspect your narrow thinking in tactical situations like this is what's holding you back from getting to the next level in your own game. From my point of view I feel like a better option is required and if the table lays as I think it does I happen to think it's very workable.

I have nothing against you either.

not entirely true about "slaughtered" and "destroyed"

Shane won against Mika 100-79. . it was all about the break in that match. svb break was phenomenal , only breaking dry 6/100 times.
http://www.oldpoolhall.com/tarupdates/shanemika.htm

Appleton lost to Hatch 100-83 . They were close up to like 75 if i remember correctly, then Dennis pulled away. afaik, they already have a rematch planned.

I actually agree with you on basically all of this for the most part, while actually disagreeing with most of it (only pool brings up such contradictions lol). Snooker is fundamentally orientated around sound potting ability, and this often comes at the expense of other areas of player's games (and a large part of the money I have made in cue sports is taking advantage of exactly this).

However, I don't believe that any solid pool player is up to the 'abillity' (whatever this even means in cue sports) of good snooker players, simply because the money involved is so polarised. Beating a few of the most emotional snooker players in cash games is largely meaningless considering that any 'good' pool player could make exponentially more money playing on the snooker tour consistently. Even the very best pool players in the world would kill to be able to make the sums of money involved in snooker each year - the cash games don't exist, and the prize pools are far too low in any variant of pool tournament.

Good snooker players can make $2-5 million a year just donking tournaments. Regardless of basically any cash games anywhere there is no reason that the best pool players should not be playing snooker for a living.

Money talks.

As far as I am concerned it as simple as that in any walk of life (and especially in a world like billiards/cue sports).

I think we have wasted about three pages of discussion on the basis if this. We seem to fundamentally disagree about how you can cue this shot (and from the sound of this post you agree that if cueing as I suggest this shot is as hard as I say it is).

If you can cue it well, I agree with you for the most part on your shot selection - I simply do not see how if snookered on the black he can ever play such an angle without the rest and all the connotations that follow.

I feel this is backed up by the commentators, the player, the image, and the subsequent discussion, but fundamentally comes down to our differing view from a short youtube clip and a screen cap of the table, and is not really worth long arguments about.


I have already written why I disagree with this point itt, but again is something that is basically impossible to establish - playing from tight of the baulk cushion is something very hard, but not so hard that what you say is not correct in some spots - it's simply an EV evaluation like any other (although I do disagree with your analysis in this spot for the reasons I have already outlined).

I make no claim to be a world class player and I run/analyse problems purely on the basis of a solid pro knowledge of cash pool/snooker/whatever on the road. I have neither the work ethic or the need to put in the hours needed to master any single game to a world class level, and as I have said in the intro to the first problem I ever ran, there is never any one single 'correct' answer to any of these problems.

Great discussion whatever btw.

I actually sat about five feet away from the entire Appleton/Hatch match and I can tell you he got destroyed. Mika too. Neither of them ever looked like they had any chance of winning ever at any time during their respective matches. I only watched the Mika match on the PPV but I thought it was a little more than just the break. When Shane runs out he makes it look effortless, Mika was all over the place. Both matches were slaughters.

I will pay to watch the rematches though

Well, I agree with you to a point. However, the shotmaking/potting ability of top pool players is nothing to sneeze at. I think if you put some of them on a snooker table they'd surprise you (I can remember one time watching Earl make four blues off the spot in row from the baulk line BEHIND HIS BACK! Try that sometime.) There are also a few top pool players who would give some of the top pro snooker players all they could handle - especially if they put some time in at the game. Efren is one example of that, Alex P is for sure another. They are simply brilliant all-around players. There are others as well.

I think with respect to this discussion, you should note that I did grow up in Canada and so while you have probably had a lot more direct exposure to snooker than I have one thing that I have seen a LOT of, and for sure a LOT more than you, is snooker players trying to play top players at pool (and in fact, once upon a time I was that very thing myself). Therefore I don't base my opinions on the matter on some sort of condescending position that my game is the best or some other BS, but rather on things I have seen with my own eyes. You put someone who grew up playing snooker up against someone who grew up playing pool (especially one pocket), and the pool players will 'out move' the snooker players almost all of the time.

In principle you're correct, but I would submit that while snooker pays well, it only pays really well if you happen to be one of the top eight or ten players in the world, and even then it doesn't pay all that well. A guy like O'Sullivan is probably light years ahead of the rest of those guys too, but there's only one of him. I'd wager that not too many others are above the million pound mark, are there? The prize money is also dropping fast and unless they make some changes soon it might not pay nearly so well as it did at all.

Meanwhile some of the top pool players also do well, though obviously not as well (though Efren has probably had a couple of $1 million years in his career) but it's also fair to say that the amount of dedication you need to put into switching games, and the dry spell you'd go through when it first happens, is obviously going to be a big impairment to someone like, say, Corey Dueuel or John Schmidt or someone making the change and chasing the big dollars. I mean we're talking about thousands of hours here, it's not something you can just jump into.

Besides, a lot of pool players are at heart degenerate gamblers and they would go crazy in the UK with the lack of action

Every player in the top 16 right now is a dollar millionaire on prize money alone, any player who has been in the top 32 for a decade or more will be close to it in prize money, and both of these will be well over if you include sponsorship and endorsements. This has been true for close to forty years now (even many players in the time of Alex Higgin's prime were pound millionaires) so i't not like any pool player has not had a huge incentive to switch for basically their entire career (and in many cases since before they were born).

The winner of even one of the smaller tour events wins prize money often in excess of 4-5x the prize of the US open - this is a huge difference, one which can basically allow a player to free up their life and not have to spend it shuffling from hall to hall trying to run up games constantly.

This makes no sense though - these players will have put thousands of hours into learning specific games (it's not like you wake up one day as a one pocket or nine ball genius), so why not snooker considering the incentives? It's not like you can't do the two things at once - there are plenty of examples of players who did very well in both at the same time.

Wait, that was back in the 70s and 80s. Are you serious? Cuz that sounds unbelievable.

Even back then the sums of money were huge - remember it's not just prize money but also exhibitions, sponsorship, and endorsements which in the era of tobacco advertising were enormous. The big BBC documentary about Higgins claimed that he blew through well over four million during his career, and he was far from the most dominant player of that era (and the money was worth much more than it is today due to inflation obv).

Oh right, the tobacco companies made sense. It was when anti-smoking wasn't even a concept.

No idea where you get that info. By my information the first snooker millionaire was Steve Davis, and even for him probably not until around 1984 or so when the tv coverage and the prize money really began to take off (and don't forget he had a powerhouse manager in Barry Hearn - that was a huge factor for him). Those guys back in the 70's probably made a good living at the game, but I don't think they were millionaires by any stretch. As for the current top 16 I would say that all of them do very well, but I wager not as well as you think. Alain Robidoux was in the top 16 for a years and I promise you he ain't no millionaire. Thorburn was one of the best of all time and he told me that he didn't start to make serious off-table money until maybe '84. I mean for sure he did very well over the span of his career, but not as well as you seem to think. As for Higgins well he may well have gone through four million, but I'll bet every time he told that story the number got bigger.

I'm not going to go nuts googling everything, but here is a money list from the mid 90's. For sure there's some big money up top, but it falls off a lot when you drop out of the top 10...

Rk Player 1995/96 1994/95
1. Stephen Hendry £ 631,442 £ 740,194
2. Peter Ebdon £ 327,805 £ 210,000
3. John Higgins £ 289,697 £ 283,970
4. Ronnie O'Sullivan £ 219,222 £ 285,101
5. Nigel Bond £ 197,620 £ 168,060
6. John Parrott £ 196,542 £ 158,736
7. Darren Morgan £ 192,449 £ 71,551
8. Ken Doherty £ 192,226 £ 194,703
9. Steve Davis £ 186,090 £ 157,608
10. Alan McManus £ 152,367 £ 142,801

12. Andy Hicks £ 94,375 £ 84,315

Jimmy White £ 88,217 ?
James Wattana £ 82,292


But if there is all this money as you claim. Why in hell was the world's #1 player trying to make extra by rigging matches? That makes no sense AT ALL.

There are, but I would submit that most of them come from Canada or Europe. In the USA there are for sure some very talented players who would do very well at snooker. The problem is that there simply are no tables! Then what tables there are usually are covered with pool cloth and have supremely tricked up pockets and are designed for golf games. Plus while in the UK it's well-known that snooker is lucrative and that may act as an incentive for young kids to get into it, in the USA the general public doesn't even know snooker exists. Hell, even in the pool rooms people are barely aware of the UK tour. Kids get into playing pool because it's a fun game and they can beat their buddies out of a few bucks here and there and for the odd one here and there they get hooked and develop into players. Nope quite frankly only in the UK or possibly Canada or Australia could a pool player find the equipment and competition necessary to develop a decent game (or with an asterisk China). In the USA it's virtually impossible.

As for switching games, you probably have a point that it wouldn't take thousands of hours. In fact I myself could probably coach a few pool players to the point where they would be very, very dangerous at snooker, provided they were open to the idea in not that long at all. The problem is that even if I got them to a decent level there's still 100's of guys in the UK who are chasing that same apple, and like I say only 16 who make the really serious money to make the whole exercise worthwhile. I do think there are a few who could do it. Shane Van Boenig for sure, probably John Schmidt, Corey Deuel, plus obviously a lot of the Europeans and Filipinos. Alex P for sure would be a threat. He already plays a dynamite game of snooker from living in Canada and he has so much charisma I actually happen to think he'd be a perfect wild card invite to the Masters one of these years. It would be awesome to watch that and the UK public would love him.

i don't think you can claim ignorance is a valid reason for the worlds best pool players not moving over to snooker. there have been a number of snooker players over in America trying there hand a pool for fun. and, even with out that, a top pool player should be educated enough to know about snooker and invest some time in the game, even if its just to help him improve there pool game.

the reason for pool players not moving across must be ether there not technically good enough to be consistently in the top 10 snooker players in the world, or that they like being a big fish in a small pond. financially there is no reason not to make the swap if your one of the worlds best at pool and skilled enough to be in the top 10 or so snooker players. hell if a few Americans made the swap maybe a few tournaments like the power snooker will be shown in America and there eyes will be opened to a new sport....

That figure was purely based on the Higgins quote brought up by the people researching his life after his death. Neither of us have any way to quantify how much people were making off table so the argument is largely moot. The 70's inflation/crisis has a big effect, as does some other factors, but the top players were certainly seen as extremely wealthy by the general public by the late 70's in England.

Steve Davis was the first prize money millionaire, but there is/was lot of other revenue streams to a pro snooker player which make this much more murky. If Thorburn says that I would be inclined to trust him over hack journalists views of Alex Higgins, but they were certainly making sums of money that may not have been millions, but were still very large even compared to other sports of the time in England.

That's not a very massive drop off - you still have a huge class of players making between £50 and £100k a year in tournament winnings alone. There is certainly no one inside of the top 32 who - including off table money - is not making between £100 and £200k a year just to hit a ball with a stick - assuming even just a short ten year playing career thats quite a quick and easy way to earn over a million pounds if you have even close to a world class ability at the game.

This is not even close to true in pool unless you get out on the road and hustle.


As far as the group that were supposed to investigate him went, he was not, but regardless of my opinions on his guilt, people get greedy and the sums of money available through betting can dwarf the sums available even in much richer sports. Plenty of extremely rich people do very, very crooked things in even the worlds richest sports and it has basically zero bearing on how rich the actual game or sport is - to many people no amount of money is ever enough.

I'm actually pretty hopefull that Hearn will try and do stuff like this to get the market expanded in snooker. Certainly Alex P would be a joy to watch going at the best snooker players (might also help in getting a few more tables around the place in the US).

is it still true that the worlds top pool players tend to look up to snooker players technical ability? i read/heard somewhere that playing with an open bridge is a lot harder and requires much better fundamentals then closed bridge play? I think it was in reference to ronnie playing 9 ball and having problems with his break and moving his head. his style build on good cue action, keeping his body still, delivering the cue straight through the line of the ball etc was holding his 9 ball break back because he wasn't able to generate enough power like some of the less standard pool players he was playing against.

Yes well basically Ronnie's break was so weak he was essentially handicapping the entire field. He just had no business playing in top-level pool tournaments at all.

As for the technical abilities of pool players, they definitely are strong in that department, but I don't think that's the be all and end all of top-level potting. If you actually drilled down on the fundamentals of top pool players you probably wound't find all that much different about them - bearing in mind some obvious differences because of the big stroke they need sometimes.