Snooker

I have lived in Scotland now for just over three years and although I only play billiards I feel it is time someone without bias gives an opinion on the turmoil in Scottish Snooker.
Having attended meetings and met most of the people involved ,listened to both sides,very aggressive in their condemnation of the other I think it would be impossible to resolve the problems in Scottish Snooker as things stand.
The people charge of Scottish Snooker and the rival association hold deep rooted grudges and I am told this has allways been the case.
Now,after several failed meetings with the WSA to try to resolve matters ,the situation is worse.
This has caused the WSA to withdraw the main tour place available to the seasons top ranked player,and should international status be lost there would be nothing meaningfull to play for at all.
We have two associations claiming to be running things and very little information coming from either.
They have gone from being very active in canvassing support to silence.
Two associations and two tournament calendar’s which add up to nothing.
I am not casting blame on one side or the other but at both.
All are to blame for perpetuating this school playground stuff.
The tragedy is that they are not kids but grown men who cannot bury the hatchet.
Neither side is completely right or wrong and mistakes have been made but if the games in Scotland are to survive I think everyone has to draw a line under all that has happened ,properly join one body and vote.
Democratic change from the inside is the only way.
Most of those I have spoken to seem to think they are helping the game,they are not bad people but they are very stubborn and in fact are ruining billiards and snooker in Scotland.
There are quite a few keen players in the east,Edinburgh for example.
Why are they not involved?
Is it politice again?
Can anyone answer that?
There are many talented and keen players of both games in Scotland.
They deserve better.
Roy Bacon
Scotland

Roy, you are an intelligent man and much of what you say, if not all in fact, is true. I have lost count of the number of times I have posted on various websites that all I want is an open, fair and democratic election run properly.

I have been seeking this since my attendance at the Sept 07 board meeting of SSL.

I thought it was going to happen the other week when Mr. Cameron shook the hand of the WSA representative. We know outcome of that “agreement”.

Legal opinion was provided on the voting procedure and ignored, quite simply, with dwindling support the former board now consider democracy to be ” mob rule”.

I’d go in a room tomorrow and have an election, anyone who would not is afraid of democracy, the question, is WHY?

Oh and as for democracy, the snooker players have voted with their feet!

A very helpful and unbiased post Roy and you hit the nail on the head, thank you.

A few weeks back i was looking on the ‘British film institute’ website and had a look to see what footage they had on 1970s Snooker. They had a good amount of old footage some dating back from 1971 to around 1990 but i’m sure they have more recent footage. I made an appointment not so long ago with the BFI to look at various matches and to make notes at their research centre in London. A couple of matches that i got to see were the 1978 Daily Mirror Champion Of Champions plus the 1978 Dry Blackthorn Cup between Alex Higgins and Ray Reardon. Of course there is a fee to see these tapes but for me it was well worth it. The site is worth a look at if your interested in the early days of Snooker. Just thought i’d tell my fellow members incase any of you are indeed interested.

I stumbled upon a bit of trivia a couple of months back.

As you probably know the game was invented in the nineteenth century by some British army officers in India. The man who is credited with inventing it was called Chamberlain. So what? you probably say. Did you know that he was the grandfather of Neville Chamberlain, the UK Prime Minister in 1939 who tried to appease Hitler and was eventually replaced, I think, by Winston Churchill?

Nice fact …. if it was correct. Unfortunately there is no connection between the two men.

Neville Francis Fitzgerald Chamberlain, of snooker fame, was born in 1856, and produced only one daughter, Nora Mary Chamberlain. She married Lord Wigram in 1912. Neville Chamberlain (Prime Minister) was born in 1869, son of Joseph Chamberlain. The two Chamberlains were very nearly contemporaries.

Then I apologise unreservedly. It was in a book which I thought was a reliable source. I wouldn’t ever submit erroneous information to any site. There is already enough dubious stuff on the net. Maybe a moderator could oblige us all by deleting the entire thread.

Hello and welcome to my TSF Snookert Trivia Competition…a competition to find out the member of the tsf who knows the most snooker trivia.
I have put down 15 questions rated in difficulty from 1-5….5 being the hardest and 1 being the easiest. If you say answer a question rated 3 correctly then you get 3pts and so on….
So here are the questions (number next to each question is the rating)

1.How many points were scored in the final session of the 2008 World Championship final? 3

2.Who was the only player to lose 5-0 in round 1 of the of the 1975 Benson and Hedges Masters? 2

3.What is Stephen Hendry’s middle name 1

4.What season did Jim Wych become a professional? 2

5.Who came 3rd in the 1988 Lion Brown New Zealand Masters? 4

6.Which player won, in the Crucible era, the prize for the highest break with the lowest break in Crucible history, and in which year ? 3

7.What is Gino Rigitano highest ranking 3

8.Who was first winner of Junior Pot Black? 2

9.Which 3 players represented Rest of the World in the 1979 World Cup 4

10.Who did Joe Davis play in his first ever World Championship match 2

11.How many times did Fred Davis have the highest break in world championships 3

12.What tournament was the International S.C. in Birmingham host for 3

13.Who won the PIOS event 7 in 2008? 1

14.”It’s like climbing Mount Everest and then being expected to climb the flagpole.”
Who said it, and about what was (s)he talking? 5

15.List every world final referee since 1977 2

What: 2009 World Games – cue sports

Where: Kaohsiong, Taiwan

When: 22-26 July 2009
p.s.: come on waldo get that medal

If you’d like to play snooker in the U.S. maybe I can help you find a table.

I’ve been putting together a list of U.S. pool halls, recreation centers, private clubs, senior citizen centers, inns, and other sites that have at least one snooker table. This coming month (June 2009) I’ll be posting the complete list online at a new website. The list will be available in a variety of formats.

There are 179 rooms in the U.S. with at least one snooker table. There are about 100 snooker tables of regulation size, more than 100 tables 5′ x 10′ in size, and a handful of smaller tables. That’s not a lot of tables, but it’s what we’ve got.

In a few weeks I’ll follow up with a link to the website. Cheers to everyone who has helped with the list.

World Snooker have put up a profile of Anda Zhang and quoted his date of birth as 24 July 2008!

Most of us were not even walking at that age let alone playing snooker!

I have seen this be successful on various of sport forums, basically, the top 16 in the World are split into groups of 4, and you choose 1 from each group and every game they win all over the world everyone who has chosen that player will get 3 points.

Groups

Group 1

Ronnie O’Sullivan
Stephen Maguire
Shaun Murphy
John Higgins

Group 2

Ali Carter
Ryan Day
Mark Selby
Marco Fu

Group 3

Neil Robertson
Stephen Hendry
Mark Allen
Joe Perry

Group 4

Ding Junhui
Peter Ebdon
Mark Williams
Mark King

Please chose, people say when people are new they can’t run anything, but I have done this any many forums, so please give me a chance.

A few ground rules, which apply to every round unless explicitly stated by the questionmaster:

1) You may post only one answer in a single message
2) After you have guessed, you must wait for another message (by someone else) to appear before your next guess.
3) You must wait for the current questionmaster to confirm the correct answer, and update the scoreboard, before starting the next question.

ROUND ONE

If I listed all the players who have reached at least one ranking quarter-final, in alphabetical order, which player would be first?