Snooker vs Billiards

[Marvin Gardens]

Snooker seems to growing in popularity of late. I was a mediocre snooker player decades ago. A friend offered to give me an old 9' Brunswick pocket billiard/pool table in need of new cushions, pockets, and felt. I know the difference between the regulation tables. Before I pursue this, any thoughts as to whether a standard pool table would be useful for practicing snooker? I've heard yes and also no.

I loved to play but just don't like going inside bars anymore.

thanks.

Bob

[walkin jack]

I have never played Billiards but I did play a lot of pool and snooker in my military days back in the early 60s. I did pretty well in tournaments in San Diego playing pool. I loved to play snooker. I would get ready for a pool tournament by playing nothing but snooker for a few days before. The longer table and smaller pockets in snooker seemed to help sharpen me up for the 8-ball or 9-ball tourneys. After a week on the snooker table those 8-ball pockets looked like garage doors to me....couldn't miss.

[Moonman]

Good Snooker players seem to THUMP pool players.

Allyson Fisher was a Snooker player before she came to
this country to win everything in sight for years at pool.

[Fishslayer]

Originally Posted by Marvin Gardens

Snooker seems to growing in popularity of late. I was a mediocre snooker player decades ago. A friend offered to give me an old 9' Brunswick pocket billiard/pool table in need of new cushions, pockets, and felt. I know the difference between the regulation tables. Before I pursue this, any thoughts as to whether a standard pool table would be useful for practicing snooker? I've heard yes and also no.

I loved to play but just don't like going inside bars anymore.

thanks.

Bob

Given a choice I would have a snooker table in my house rather than a standard pocket billiards table. Practicing on a snooker table is much more useful than practicing on a regular pool table. I used to shoot a lot of snooker and when I got on a regular pool table the pockets looked like garbage cans.

Snooker also requires a finer eye & more strategy.

[fat tom]

Pretty much paid my way through Clemson via the pool table. There was only one snooker table anywhere around. The Corner Pocket in Greenville,SC. I would kill time on that table waiting to find a game. I really liked it a lot. Definitely sharpened the skills. No such thing as "rattling one in",that's for sure!
f.t.

[Fishslayer]

Originally Posted by fat tom

No such thing as "rattling one in",that's for sure!
f.t.

There was one particular table in Redondo Beach that was notorious. The most infuriating thing was, you knew that if you rolled one down the rail absolutely perfectly it would go in, but anything but perfection was gonna leave a hanger for your opponant's next shot.

[mkk41]

When I got my table , I had the guy that does my Am. Legion Pots table as well as most of the local bars tables recover mine. He did it on the side (cash) and it cost half of what the local billiard supply house wanted to come out and do. And they contract with him!

[WuzzFuzz]

Along with the snooker table, did any of you set up the pins, to play pin pool?

I wish I could remember the set up...

.......... I


..........I

..........I

........ I I I

That was using the snooker balls to play.


WuzzFuzz

[growr]

A medicore snooker player will clean the clock of a very good 8 ball player everytime...

Sort of like using a stone to get a good edge on a knife and then use the steel to make it REALLY sharp.....the snooker table is much like the steel....makes you REALLY sharp...then again so will playing 3 cushion Billiards which is nearly a lost art....

Snooker is very demanding and unforgiving which is why I said what I did.

If I had the choice I would have the snooker table in a nanosecond!

Randy

[CAJUNLAWYER]

Originally Posted by fat tom

Pretty much paid my way through Clemson via the pool table. There was only one snooker table anywhere around. The Corner Pocket in Greenville,SC. I would kill time on that table waiting to find a game. I really liked it a lot. Definitely sharpened the skills. No such thing as "rattling one in",that's for sure!
f.t.

We were probably separated at birth. We used to play snooker at the union during the day and then go make money on the 8 ball tables at the bars at night. That and playing gin got me through undergrad and law school in style (probably also the reason I didn't make Law Review either )

[Fishslayer]

Originally Posted by Marvin Gardens

Meanwhile, back to my original question. Is a 9' pocket billiard table pretty much useless for practicing snooker shots?

Not "useless" but I think the point people are making is that it's kind of doing it backwards. You can practice your stroke, etc. but when you get to a snooker table the pockets are still gonna look incredibly small & the strategy won't be second nature. If you have to think TOO much you can get in your own way...

[williamlayton]

I have no experience with billards but I sure wish i could play it.
Just something about it appears sneaky and fun.
Blessings

[Fishslayer]

Originally Posted by williamlayton

I have no experience with billards but I sure wish i could play it.
Just something about it appears sneaky and fun.
Blessings

8 ball & nineball are checkers.

Billiards & snooker are chess.

[labworm]

Willie Mosconi was a checker player, oh my.

Is it pool or pocket billiards?

[Fishslayer]

Originally Posted by labworm

Willie Mosconi was a checker player, oh my.

Is it pool or pocket billiards?

Mr. Mosconi was an alien from another planet...the same one that Jerry Miculek is from. If there was any money in snooker or billiards in America at the time Mr. Mosconi would have been a champion at those I'm sure.

Dunno about the pocket billiards thing, but I never hung out in a "Pocket Billiards" hall when I was younger...

The Music Man "Ya Got Trouble" - YouTube

[Kinman]

Just being an average pool player and never taking the time to learn either billiards or snooker I wonder if due to the difference between snooker and billiards is where a term I remember hearing when I was kid came from. If somebody pulled a good one on you or beat you out of a deal on something I remember the old boys saying "You got snookered." Just wondering if the sharp players practiced playing snooker in order to have the advantage over the pool players and in so doing were "snookering" their opponents.

[labworm]

I will tell you one thing for sure.

If you played some billiards I guarantee your pool game would improve, it's all about angles and English.

Me, never chalked up at a snooker table, but looking at the table I am sure it would also help improve ones game.

[growr]

Didn't Willie Mosconi learn on a real 3 cushion billiards table? Could be poor memory but I thought that is where he learned his unbelivable precision and control.

Randy

[labworm]

Originally Posted by growr

Didn't Willie Mosconi learn on a real 3 cushion billiards table? Could be poor memory but I thought that is where he learned his unbelivable precision and control.

Randy

To be totally honest, I don't know but I will look it up.

I do know he was very instrumental helping out Newman and Gleason in making the movie "The Hustler".

[Fishslayer]

Originally Posted by Kinman

If somebody pulled a good one on you or beat you out of a deal on something I remember the old boys saying "You got snookered." Just wondering if the sharp players practiced playing snooker in order to have the advantage over the pool players and in so doing were "snookering" their opponents.

In snooker you must hit your object ball with the cueball first. By "snookering" somebody you hide the cueball where they don't have a shot at it. There are point penalties for missing your object ball but I don't recall them off the top of my head. It's been years.

I believe in eightball or nineball when you hide the cueball it's called a safety, but you're still "snookered." .

[Dave Nash]

Originally Posted by Marvin Gardens

Snooker seems to growing in popularity of late. I was a mediocre snooker player decades ago. A friend offered to give me an old 9' Brunswick pocket billiard/pool table in need of new cushions, pockets, and felt. I know the difference between the regulation tables. Before I pursue this, any thoughts as to whether a standard pool table would be useful for practicing snooker? I've heard yes and also no.

I loved to play but just don't like going inside bars anymore.

thanks.

Bob

Originally Posted by Marvin Gardens

...Meanwhile, back to my original question. Is a 9' pocket billiard table pretty much useless for practicing snooker shots? I had someone tell me that I could change out the rails to make a snooker table but that is getting deeper into this project than I think I want to get.

Regards.

Bob

Originally Posted by Fishslayer

Not "useless" but I think the point people are making is that it's kind of doing it backwards. You can practice your stroke, etc. but when you get to a snooker table the pockets are still gonna look incredibly small & the strategy won't be second nature. If you have to think TOO much you can get in your own way...

“Marvin Gardens”:

I am in agreement with “Fishslayer”: the table wouldn’t be worthless (hey, it’s better than nothing) but it wouldn’t necessarily be helpful either. And unless you plan to keep it FOREVER, then just like a gun, what you’ll have is a Brunswick table (not a bad thing in itself) that is no longer “as manufactured” and, worse yet, might be converted into something that by the time you might wish to sell it, is no longer in vogue or scares people because it has been so radically altered from its original form.

Couple of things:

First, I played snooker like many of the people here, both inside the US and overseas. But I was primarily a pretty serious 3 Cushion player. There was a time I lived to play that game and I was fortunate enough with it, to have played both here and in Europe (including Belgium and parts of Holland where caroms of one sort or another took on almost religious-like proportions).

So you need to know that whatever primary knowledge I have about such things in general lies more with that form of this sport instead of what you are considering.

BUT, I will tell you that the proverbial old-timers at one place that was something of a second home to me back then and who were deadly accurate snooker players NEVER played on anything but the tables on which they competed. I played there routinely for quite a while (3 Cushion mostly) and I never saw those guys playing (even for fun, although I don’t think “fun” was part of their regimen) on a pocket billiards table.

The place had four, maybe six snooker tables and about the same number of billiard tables (plus a huge host of commercial pool tables) and the same people were on them all the time. That was how they got good in the first place and that’s how they stayed that way. I would suggest that following their example could be a good thing.

I had been a pool player before I “discovered” 3 Cushion and to be honest I found it hard to go back and play the game “for fun” (with friends and not the always-competitive 3 Cushion players I usually spent time with) for just like the people here talk about the “pocket sizes” in your case (pool to snooker) being a possible issue, I always had trouble with something as simple as trying to adjust to the only slightly smaller and lighter balls when I would go from billiards to pool. It certainly wasn’t the end of the world but I was very serious about whatever I did back then and that slight difference was enough to be annoying and sometimes maybe troublesome in regard to my performance (I guess “fun” never entered my regimen then either).

With guns, where little differences in sights and trigger parameters can mess you up, there is a reason why the serious people on this site will tell you (about them) to pick something, get good with it, and stick with it. And it’s the same with these “games”: if you’re going to play snooker, use a snooker table.

As to the table in question, do you know its model and age? A true 9’ table (especially an older one and no I don’t mean an antique one but even some of the neat, machine age, metal and hardwood framed, tank-like behemoths that were the standard before the frighteningly “colorful” ones came about in an effort to broaden the appeal of the game in the 1960’s) could very well be a neat thing to have. Or, if you wouldn’t be betraying the good intentions of a friend by flipping it, it could something you could use to trade up into a snooker table that would be more beneficial to your efforts to practice the game of your choice in terms of it being bigger still, with not only the smaller pockets that everybody has been discussing but also with the directional nap that is unique to the cloth that covers it and not a “regular” table.

Good luck to you and I hope this helps.

[Backlighting]

Throughout my high school years I put a lot of time in "straight pool". The local joints usually had a 5x10 table which I played 14.1 on once in a while. My time on it definitely sharpened my game for the 9' tables.
At my peak I ran 32 balls. In the 60's I played at Aames pool room in NYC. This is where some of "The Hustler" scenes were filmed.
I still play, many years later, but the eyes aren't what they used to be.