It’s time for snooker to introduce a pocket-nomination rule
Luck is a part of life - including sport. And for most of it, there’s nothing that can be done. The cueball just running an extra inch to nestle in behind a baulk colour and leave the opponent in trouble, for instance. Or a helpful nudge off a ball to leave you perfectly on the next shot.
But there are instances of luck that can be tackled, and I’m a firm believer that they should be. Indeed, there’s one in particular that I feel has no place in the game. It gives an unfair advantage to the player at the table, an unfair disadvantage to their opponent, and undermines the basic principle of snooker that you’re only at the table until you fail to pot a ball.
Note the key phrase in that last sentence: until you fail to pot a ball.
I’m referring to when a player misses a pot, but it goes into another pocket and their break continues. And there’s a simple solution to it: only counting a pot when the ball goes into the intended pocket.
There is, of course, a somewhat obvious reason why this remains a legal part of the game: the correct ball was potted.
I take a different view, though: the intended pot was missed, and therefore it should be the end of that player’s turn. Before you get out the pitchforks and chastise me for being an idiot, allow me to lay out my case.
First, here are a couple of examples to highlight my objection. In the first video, Stephen Maguire was two frames behind Tian Pengfei. Pengfei had the momentum and was unquestionably the stronger player. Maguire missed a blue and benefitted from an unbelievable fluke, which by his own admission changed the match. Under normal circumstances, Pengfei would have had the opportunity to play the blue:
Analysis: https://snookerhq.com/2019/04/22/fluked-blue-helps-stephen-maguire-through/
In the 2020 Grand Prix final, Judd Trump enjoyed this enormous slice of luck: https://www.eurosport.co.uk/snooker/world-grand-prix/2020-2021/world-grand-prix-2020-world-number-1-judd-trump-takes-complete-command-of-final-with-jack-lisowski_sto8040722/story.shtml
And how about this fluke in a decider: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbgGTWgnVQs
It’s one thing over a long match, where there is a genuine case to be made that both players benefit from luck and it likely balances out over the match. But with so many of today’s tournaments being shorter format, these incidents can be the deciding factor in who wins and loses.
“He has to hope he misses”
Snooker commentators love a cliche. You can’t listen to Dennis Taylor for more than about a minute before he talks about the “DDK - dreaded double kiss” or Terry Griffiths or what a nice lad the player at the table is is. John Virgo has single-handedly spawned something of a movement around “Where’s the cueball going?!”.
And one of the most frequent statements by a commentator is that “there’s nothing you can do when you’re sat in your chair and your opponent is at the table. You just have to hope he misses.”
When we take a second to reflect, the magnitude of this becomes more apparent. Yes of course we all know it to be true, but the only way the turn changes during a frame is when a ball is not potted. Whether deliberately or unintentionally - i.e. a miss or a safety - a turn ends when a ball doesn’t go in a pocket.
So it’s no exaggeration to say that, despite its name, the game of snooker is predicated on balls being potted, and therefore it holds true that unintentional pots carry a significant advantage. At the very least, it gives an opportunity to lay a nasty snooker. Yet with the prolific break builders of the modern game, it can also swing momentum or lead to the end of frame and match.
In a game where the turn at the table is all about making a pot, the player should reach the end of that turn when they fail to make their intended pot - regardless of where the object ball ends up.
“Luck plays a part in every sport.”
Just before Christmas, I asked Ken Doherty on Twitter about this subject and he said “Luck plays a part in every sport.”
https://twitter.com/kendoherty1997/status/1340768611401682946?s=20
And he is correct. As I said at the outset of this article, though, there are degrees to luck and our ability to control it. Cheating happens in every sport, too, but efforts are made to prevent and control it.
Predictably, I received numerous responses to that tweet from people who took so much offence to it you’d think I’d suggested every match should operate under Shootout rules. One of the most prevalent themes was a comparison to football, with rebuttals like “what about deflections and rebounds in football.”
To which I say, “what about them?”
They’re different sports, and different sports can have different rules. As a case in point, I could argue there’s similarity between football and basketball in key areas: each team has their own end of the playing area (court or pitch), and their own goal or basket, along with a shared ball to steal from the opposing team and an objective of getting past the defenders to score points by putting the ball into the net. In football, the ball is not allowed to cross the boundary line even if it doesn’t touch the ground. In basketball, though, it is. It’s a common sight to see a player scoop the basketball back onto the court from behind the line, and play continues provided it didn’t touch the floor.
So why, then, do the permitted deflections in football have any bearing on what is and isn’t allowed in snooker, a game so far removed from football it may as well be played on the moon? Answer: they don’t have any bearing. It’s a lazy comparison.
Yet there is a sport with more similarity to snooker, and which has already introduced the pocket nomination rule: 8-ball pool. (Ironically, I was told on Twitter that “pool is a different sport” to snooker. Does that mean football is the same sport as snooker?)
Let me be clear:
I am not proposing that flukes and luck are banned
Here is what I am - and crucially, am not - suggesting:
1) A pocket should be intended for a shot, and if missed, the player’s turn ends - in exactly the same way it ends if they miss any other shot.
2) If the pot is missed and the object ball flukes its way into a pocket, it should not count.
3) This only applies to intended pots, and has no impact on any other area of the game. A shot-to-nothing, accidental plant, fluked pot out of a snooker etc would all still count.
4) It does not ban flukes. The rub of the green, run of the balls are still in effect. Players can miss and leave nothing on, lay an unintended snooker, miss a ball and leave their opponent hampered - luck and flukes take many forms in snooker, and having to nominate a pocket won’t change that.
Nominating a pocket won’t be noticeable
It’s a fair objection to say that if players had to nominate a pocket on each shot, it would be tedious and ruin the viewing experience.
Fortunately, they would not have to.
Remember, players already have to nominate a colour before playing the shot, and the only reason they don’t do it on every shot is because 99% of the time it’s very clear what colour is being played. If they’re aiming for the blue on its spot, it’s obvious that blue is the nominated colour. It’s only when two colours are close together or the player is snookered that they need to verbally confirm what one they’re intending to hit.
The same would be true with a pocket nomination. Lining up the blue off the spot into a centre pocket means it’s very clear what the intended pocket is. The only time they would really need to say it out loud is on a double. The rest of the time, it would be a real but invisible rule exactly like the need to nominate a colour.
Indeed, the rules that pertain to the colours give credence to my idea. The logic that a missed pot that flukes into another pocket should count “because it still went into a pocket” doesn’t apply when the wrong colour is hit even if it goes into a pocket. If a player pots a red and then nominates, say, yellow, but accidentally hits the brown and pots it, the pot would not only not count but it would be called as a foul and miss. The idea that “a ball went into the pocket” is invalid.
Rules are not set in stone
The rules of snooker today have been amended since its inception. They are not set in stone, forever destined to remain the same and forcing the creation of a new game to make a minor tweak. The miss rule was introduced in 1995, and as recently as 2019 there were updates made to the rule book. (These weren’t new rules so much as they were clarifications, but it still demonstrates the rulebook is an evolving thing.)
So, yes, the ability to add and amend rules is there, and suggestions shouldn’t be overlooked or dismissed purely on the basis that they are new or amended.
Nor is it only fans like myself who have had suggestions. In 2013, Graeme Dott suggested a shot clock or timer was introduced to overcome the slow play by his opponent Peter Ebdon. And it was also Ebdon who sparked discussion around a shot clock in 2005 following his intentional gamesmanship against Ronnie O’ Sullivan, which included his infamous 12-point break that took over five minutes to make.
Shaun Murphy has stated some eyebrow-raising requests, including a spotted cueball and ball-in-hand after fouls. He also wants a shot clock. And Mark Williams wants to change the Miss Rule to prevent players winning the game by forcing their opponent to have endless attempts at a snooker.
The game at one point even suffered the indignity of having orange and purple balls added!
The Miss Rule was a significant change in the game. I’m not going to say the rule itself is comparable to a pocket nomination, but I will say that it was introduced for the same principle: to stop players having an unfair advantage.
“Ah! Yes, BUT! Players don’t intentionally miss the pot and fluke it,” I hear you shout.
And you’re right. But it doesn’t matter. The principle is the pertinent bit, and that principle is the unfair advantage players gain. Look again at the videos at the start of this article - can you truly argue Maguire and Trump didn’t gain unfair advantages, and at crucial stages of the match?
What would this really look like?
It would look exactly the same as snooker currently looks.
The only instance when players would state the pocket is if they’re attempting a pot in a pocket that’s not the one the object ball is in front of.
If they attempt a pot, miss and fluke it, it would simply be the end of their turn. It would not be a foul. The cueball would stay where it is and the opponent would take their turn, exactly as they would had the missed ball not been fluked.
If I could distil the reason into one thought process, it would be this: the rules of the game mean a turn ends when the player misses a ball, and that ought to be consistent.
Like this Short? Click here to read: Snooker: The Miss Rule
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Big thanks to Richard White for writing this post to contribute to the website! If you want to send some nice words his way, follow him on his accounts below:
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