|
Elements of the Game
Snooker has achieved its current
status through an erratic process of evolution which can be
traced through its parent game, billiards, and, further still,
to a reognisable form of billiards which was played, like
croquet, on a lawn.
Although the Greeks and Romans
played many games with balls and sticks, it was not until
the 1340's that a game in which an arch and pin, common features
of early table billiards, were placed on a lawn and in which
maces, the precursors of cues, were sued to propel the wooden
balls.
Louis XI of France (1461-83)
is believed to have been the first to transfer the game to
a table, and billiard tables became quite a common item of
furniture among the the French and then the English nobility.
Although the lawn version survived into the 1600's billiards
was by this time played almost exclusively on tables.
Mary Queen of Scots, only months
before she was beheaded, complained bitterly that her 'table
de billiards' had been taken away by her captors. Little did
she know that her decapitated corpse would be half covered
with the cloth off her table.
By the Elizabethan age tables
were common in the taverns of London and the Cafes of Paris
and billiards had come to be one of those games of skill and
chance at which it was the done thing for gentry and aspiring
gentrey to gamble.
The
Cue
Around 1670 the thin end of
the mace started to be used, not only when the cue ball rested
under the cushion rail - originally designed of course to
prevent the balls from falling off the table - but for other
shots as a matter of preference. The complete change from
mace to cue - the word deriving from the French queue meaning
a 'tail' - took until 1800.
Since then cue design has altered
very little, although the last twenty five years have seen
a rapid increase in the number of players using two, three
and four piece cues. John Spencer was the first to break the
mould winning the World Championships in 1977, using a two-piece
cue.
In November 1938, Alex Brown,
a London professional, was the central figure in an incident
which lead to the governing body stipulating that a cue 'must
be at least 3 foot in length and conform to the accepted shape
and design'. With the cue ball marooned in the middle of a
pack of reds, Brown produced from his pocket a tiny ebony
cue, complete with tip, which his father had made. He duly
chalked the tip and played his shot but his opponent protested.
Thurston's resident referee
Charlie Chambers, sensing no doubt that the use of this implement
was outside the spirit if not the letter of the law, called
a 'foul' - and the rule was changed.
The
Tip
Before tips were invented,
players tried to strike the cue ball as centrally as possible
to avoid a miscue. Striking low (to impart back-spin) or striking
high (to impart topspin and follow through) were two skills
current only in a limited way before the invention of tips
by a French infantry captain, Mingaud, in 1807.
Languishing in a Paris prison
for debt, Mingaud devoted his ample leisure to a study of
billiards, experimenting successfully with a leather tip and
astounding all and sundry with his cuemanship upon his release.
Mingaud also discovered that
by raising the cue almost vertically - in fact into the position
in which the mace would be used - extraordinary spin effects
could be obtained by striking a sharp downwards glancing blow
to the left and right across the cue ball. This type of shot
or stroke became known as the masse - French for mace.
The
Chalk
In pre-tip days it was common
for players to twist the points of their cues in a wall or
ceiling so that the chalk like deposit was at least partial
insurance against a miscue. Ordinary chalk also came to be
used but the first marketing was done by John Carr, a marker
in John Bartley's Billiard Rooms at Bath.
Between 1818 and 1823 either
Bartley, who subsequently showed Carr, or Carr himself discovered
the positive uses of side
spin (or side as it has come to be known). If the cue
ball was struck to the right or left of centre, it was discovered
that the spin thus imparted would affect the angle at which
it rebounded off the cushion. In some cases too, side could
be used to help the cue ball into the pocket when playing
an in-off.
Carr attributed the strange
new affects he was producing to a special brand of 'twisting
chalk' which he sol in small boxes though it was of course,
merely ordinary chalk.
Today's leading players use
Triangle
chalk, normally green but available in blue, manufactured
in such a way as to give maximum adhesion between tip and
cue-ball.
The
Table
The demand for tables and equipment
was first met by furniture makers, carpenters and the like,
some of whom like John Thurston (established 1799) went over
entirely to this new specialist trade (1814).
Thurston was responsible for
many of the improvements which were to bring the manufacture
of tables almost to perfection. Table beds were orginally
of wood but Thurston began experimenting with slate in 1826
and by 1840, slate, naturally found in flat layers which make
it ideal for the permanently flat surface necessary for the
game, was generally accepted.
Early cushions were layered
strips of felt but after trying hair, list, Russian duck,
white swan skin and other substances, rubber was introduced
in 1835.
This innovation was not without
its problems. Cold weather caused the rubber to lose all elasticity,
a contingency which Thurston's met temporarily with cushion
warmers - metal pans or tubes to hold hot water. The real
breakthrough came with the vulcanising process, raising the
temperature of the natural rubber and combining it with sulphur
to produce a substance more resistant to temperature changes.
In 1845, Queen Victoria received the first of the new cushions.
In esseence, the modern table
was in existence though there were subsequent refinements.
Stip rubber was replaced by block rubber and the highest degree
of predicatbility in the angle of rebound from cushions was
achieved with the advent of steel blocks, which were used
as backing for the rubber.
Pockets changed, not so much
in size as in shape. Initially the cushion rubbers were shaped
as squarely at the entrance to the pockets as they were elsewhere
but this meant that a ball could not enter a pocket unless
it did not touch the sides or brushed the jaw by the merest
fraction.
Easier access was promoted
by the cutting away the underside of the rectangular shape
of the rubber in such a way that the ball was turned towards
the pocket rather than allowed to bounce off the cushion at
the usual angle. The extent and angle of this cut-away of
the underside of the rubber has a crucial influence on the
ease of pocket entry. The greater the undrcut, the more it
is possible for the the rounded surface of the ball to tuck
underneath it and thus enter the pocket.
The Billiards and Snooker Control
Council's (B&SCC) official templates as adopted in 1892,
were of limited value in that they measured only the width
of the pockets and took no account of the undercut. Thus,
te templates could fit either a pocket which players found
very easy or one which they found nearly impossible. The ease
or difficulty therefore of championship tables thus became
largely a matter of custom or preference with a general tendency
towards ease of play.
After decades of petty wrangling
among the trade firms, who had to produce tables to meet the
requirements and rules of the governing bodies, a sub-committee
of the International Billiards and Snooker Federation (IBSF)
was entrusted with the design of a new template specifying
the degree of undercut and ensuring that the pocket did not
narrow beyond the edge of the playing surface. Pockets which
had not incorporated the latter stipulation tended to reject
even accurately struck balls if played at speed from narrow
angles - that is positions in which the player could not aim
at the full width of the pocket opening.
The new template designed by
Norman Clare, was accepted by the IBSF and B & SCC in
1980.
The
Cloth
Early tables were covered in
green cloth to simulate the grass on which the parent outdoor
version of the game was played. Cloth also deadened the noise
of the which the balls would otherwise have made on a polished
wooden table and made control a little easier.
Initially, cloths were course
and heavy but once improving technology had made it possible
to mow the previously long nap
email
- info@fcsnooker.co.uk
The
Frank Callan Suite - 8 Collinson Street - Ribbleton - Preston
- PR1 5EY
t.
+ 44 (01772) 702211 - f. 44 (01772) 793700
|
