Snooker – My passion!

Snooker has been my passion for almost a decade now. I started playing snooker some 10 years back when I was introduced to it by some friends. What started as an evening out steadily turned into a passion. The game of snooker is quite simple.
Snooker is played on a full-size billiard table with 6 pockets. The game starts with one white ball, 15 reds and six colored balls – yellow, green, brown, blue, pink and black. All reds are worth one point, with the colored balls being 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 points in order. The objective is to “pot” a red ball into one of the pockets followed by a colored ball. The colored balls come back on the table till all the reds are finished. Once the reds are finished the colored balls are potted in a particular order. The best way to remember the order of potting the colored balls are “You Go Brown Before Potting Black”. Take the first letters of the above statement and you get Yellow, Green, Brown, Blue, Pink and Black!! Generally great players aim to pot the reds and gain position on the black as it gives them the highest points. Technically if a good player pots all the reds followed by the black every time and then the colored balls in order he stands to make a break of 147.
Some places use a concept of free ball and then the maximum break becomes 155. However International championships do not allow the free ball concept. There are many rules and regulations in the game and one would learn them as the game is played.
Some of the great names in Snooker include Ronnie Williams, “Hurricane” Higgins – so named for his lightning speed, Ken Doherty, Steve Davis etc. India too has produced champions in Snooker like Michael Ferreira, Geet Sethi (known for his Billiards prowess), and of late Pankaj Advani.
My highest break has been 62 and I regularly get breaks of 25-30 after 10 years of playing!!