History of snooker
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The history of the snooker variant of billiards began in the second half of the 19th century, when the sport was probably developed in British India by Neville Francis Fitzgerald Chamberlain from the Black Pool or from the game Pyramids . After the game enjoyed great popularity among British soldiers stationed in India, it was introduced in Great Britain in the 1880s. The popularity rose steadily, so that in the 1910s the first higher breaks were played and the first tournaments such as the English Amateur Championship were held. The first snooker world championship followed in 1927 . Joe Davis dominated this championship until the 1940s . From 1946 he refrained from further participation and thus questioned the legitimacy of the world championship, whereupon the sharply increased popularity of snooker declined.
The following decades were playfully shaped mainly by Fred Davis and John Pulman ; a tournament organized by the players replaced the world championship after a dispute with the then world association. The world championship, which was temporarily suspended due to the sport's reduced popularity, was later revived in the form of challenge duels. After a new world association was founded in 1968 with the World Professional Billiards & Snooker Association and shortly thereafter the World Cup was again held in the knockout system , the BBC began broadcasting the Pot Black snooker tournament in 1969 , which rapidly increased the popularity of the sport . In the 1970s, TV broadcasting was further increased thanks to new tournaments such as the Masters , while from a sporting point of view, the decade was mainly shaped by Ray Reardon , John Spencer and crowd favorite Alex Higgins . In the 1980s the sport of snooker became more professional, which was evident, for example, in the first officially recognized maximum breaks , while the sport continued to grow in popularity and various professional snooker tournaments were held worldwide through Matchroom Sport .
While Steve Davis dominated the 1980s, this role was taken over by Stephen Hendry in the 1990s , who with Jimmy White had another crowd favorite as his strongest opponent. In 1992 the professional tour was opened to all players for an entry fee, while Hendry was also replaced by the golden vintage consisting of Ronnie O'Sullivan , John Higgins and Mark Williams . In 1998, the World Confederation of Billiard Sports was officially recognized by the International Olympic Committee as the world association for billiards . At the beginning of the new millennium, the ban on tobacco advertising eliminated one of the main sources of income for professional snooker, so that the sport of snooker began to shrink. Only the acquisition of the WPBSA and later by World Snooker by Barry Hearn 2009/2010 the position of snooker improved gradually, for example by increasing the number of tournaments with influence on the snooker world rankings from six to about twenty.
prehistory
Snooker is a variant of the game of billiards that probably originated in the lawn game croquet . During the 17th century, billiards was played on pocketless tables in Europe. Through various developments of the queues , for example by changing the shape just that, or by adding a bitter orange called leather plate on the tip of the cue, billiards variants as were English Billiards or different billiards versions in the second half of the 19th century in Britain and its colonies growing in popularity . Gradually there were different players who got better and better, so that they played or developed higher and higher breaks and newer shocks, until the officials tried to limit this through rules.
Development and first years
Chamberlain as the inventor of snooker
The now widely accepted and widely circulated story of the invention of snooker is based on an article published in The Field on March 19, 1938 , in which British Lieutenant Neville Francis Fitzgerald Chamberlain claimed to have developed the game of snooker. With this, Chamberlain, who was 82 years old at the time, reacted to an article in the same newspaper that snooker was invented at the Royal Military Academy Woolwich . Chamberlain's claim was supported by author Compton Mackenzie in The Billiard Player newspaper a year later , who called Chamberlain's version "irrefutable evidence." According to this version, Chamberlain served in 1875 in the then Devonshire Regiment in the city of Jabalpur, then part of British India . On a billiard table in an officers' casino there , he experimented with the game Black Pool , which is played with fifteen reds and one black, by adding colored balls to the game.
Chamberlain later served in another regiment in a hill station in Ootacamund , in whose club snooker rules were first written and posted. Probably in 1885 an English English billiard player made the acquaintance of Chamberlain and the game of snooker, which he then spread throughout Great Britain. This player is often with John Roberts Jr. identified.
Review and other versions
One of the earliest evidence of a sport similar to modern snooker is a letter from Captain Sheldrick dated February 2, 1886, playing a game at a club in Rangoon - which was then part of British India and was therefore under the control of the British Army named Snookers reported that it was also played with fifteen red balls arranged in a triangle and one yellow, one green, one brown and one black ball. In contrast to modern snooker, snookers was also played as a kind of game of chance , which could explain its popularity at the time. The first evidence of a snooker-like game in Great Britain is from the years 1887 and 1889, each of which speaks of a game called Snooker's Pool , which is referred to as an "amusing variant of the game Pyramids ". According to these two sources, the copyright to the rules of the sport at that time was held by the pool table manufacturer Burroughes & Watts , while an insignificant professional player named John Dowland is said to have developed rules. A short time later, John Dowland was also credited with the invention of the sport several times, but this cannot be proven due to the sources and lack of evidence about Dowland's influence on snooker before Chamberlain's.
Both Sheldricks Snookers and the Snooker's Pool described in Great Britain are very similar to modern snooker, but this does not apply to the variant that Chamberlain claims to be invented. In the letter to The Field newspaper , he claimed that he first added another colored ball to the frequently played Black Pool , and later added several different balls. However, according to other sources , Black Pool was played with a larger number of people, each with their own colored game ball with which they first tried to punch the opposing game balls and then the "neutral" black. This was a problem with Chamberlain's version in that there was no single cue ball or the large number of red balls. In contrast to Black Pool, the Pyramids , which was also already played at the time and which is mentioned under this name in the sources from Great Britain and as shell-out in the letter from Captain Sheldrick, had both the "pyramid" consisting of 15 reds and one sole cue ball, so it is likely that snooker emerged from Pyramids instead of the Black Pool .
After Chamberlain described himself as the inventor of snooker, various military officials supported him with letters, in which they described their memories mostly from a period between 1884 and 1886. However, the game described is similar to the Pyramids- based snookers described by Captain Sheldrick . Since the game cannot have developed in this way during this time, it is unlikely that the game developed by Chamberlain in 1875 is identical to this one. In addition, Chamberlain later stated that his game, developed in 1875, spread quickly and was popular, although it was unknown to the Central India Horse Regiment, to which Chamberlain belonged from 1876 to 1878 and later from 1884. When Chamberlain rejoined the regiment, he promoted a new game called Snooker and Snookers , which was just like the game described by Captain Sheldrick. This means that Chamberlain presumably replaced the game he developed in 1875 and probably not particularly successful later with a game based on the Pyramids game under the same name . This change between games could not have taken place before November 1880 after his return from the Second Anglo-Afghan War . Chamberlain spent most of the period following November 1880 in England before returning to India and his new station, Hill Station of Ootacamund , in late 1881 . Prior to Chamberlain's claim to invent snooker, there was speculation as to whether snooker was developed by a Colonel Snooker of the Royal Artillery at the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich , England . However, there is no evidence that snooker was known or even played in Great Britain, particularly London, before the mid-1880s. What speaks against both an invention in the Royal Military Academy Woolwich and an invention in Ootacamund before Chamberlain's arrival is that both places were frequently visited by external people and thus the game would have spread without Chamberlain being associated with it would have been. According to Chamberlain, he, Lieutenant Colonel George Tindal Pretyman - incidentally a graduate of the Royal Military Academy Woolwich - and Captain Ian Hamilton introduced the game together in Ootacamund, which Hamilton later exempted himself from. The time of introduction must have been between Chamberlain's arrival and mid-January 1882, when the military stationed there set off on a trip through India. There is no evidence that snooker was played prior to the presumed invention of Chamberlain or Pretyman. However, it remains unclear why Chamberlain in particular - Pretyman died in 1917 at the age of 72 - had waited so long to announce his version.
Joe Davis era and decline
The game of snooker became more and more popular in Great Britain, especially from the 1880s to the 1910s, even though various billiard clubs and halls were initially unable to procure a set of snooker balls before the manufacturers noticed the profitability of production. The first century breaks were recorded around 1910 , including one by the then manager of Luciana Hall . During the First World War , due to the growing number of players, the first amateur tournaments took place in which the results of seven frames were added together. The English Amateur Championship was introduced in 1916 , but the level was so low that in 1918 the American HH Lukens was able to win the tournament after six weeks of practice and under the pseudonym TN Palmer. Until then, the snooker rules contained various contradictions, which was due, among other things, to the fact that there were various local characteristics. It was not until 1919 that they were officially set for the first time by the Billiards Association and Control Council Club (later Billiards Association and Control Council , BA&CC for short), with the " re-spotted black " being introduced to ensure that every frame was a winner Has. Meanwhile, the sport of snooker spread not least in South Africa and other parts of the UK.
In the mid-1920s, snooker became the dominant sport of billiards in Great Britain and replaced English billiards . This was also due to the fact that the English Billiards players got better and better and their breaks got higher and longer, so that the interest in English Billiards decreased and the audience turned to snooker. Various regional tournaments - such as the already mentioned English Amateur Championship - were held for the first time and snooker games were sometimes played in front of more than 1,000 spectators. Various players of the time saw the potential in snooker sport and asked the BA&CC to host an open snooker tournament. After a joint proposal by Joe Davis and Bill Camkin, a snooker world championship was finally held for the first time in 1927 , which Davis won as one of ten participants with 20: 11 after frames against Tom Dennis . While either Edward James O'Donoghue in 1928 in Auckland, New Zealand or Sidney Smith in 1939 was the first player to complete a total clearance at another tournament called the Daily Mail Gold Cup , Davis won all of the first fifteen World Snooker Championships, including the first after that Second world war . After this edition Davis refrained from further participation in the World Snooker Championship, apart from taking part in other tournaments and "Exhibitions" and participating in the further development of snooker and its playground equipment. As a result, the World Snooker Championship lost its importance, which resulted in a decline in interest in the sport of snooker.
In the 1950s, the snooker world championship was dominated by Joe Davis' younger brother Fred , who won a total of eight world championships from 1948. In 1950 the BBC first broadcast recordings of the then World Cup before most players boycotted the previous World Snooker Cup in 1952 . With the Professional Matchplay Championship, which is now mostly recognized as the World Snooker Championship of those years, the players played their own tournament, which was always won by Fred Davis until the last edition won by John Pulman in 1957. Joe Davis, meanwhile, played a maximum break in early 1955 - the highest possible break in snooker, but according to some sources it had already been played by Edward James O'Donoghue in 1934 - before starting his 1956 book How I Play Snooker brought out a kind of textbook for snooker game, which among other things had a great influence on the later six-time world champion Steve Davis , who was not related to him. After seven years without a World Snooker Championship, it was reintroduced by Rex Williams with the permission of BA&CC as a series of so-called Challenge Matches between 1964 and 1968. These challenge duels were consistently won by John Pulman. In addition, an amateur snooker world championship was held for the first time in 1963 .
Professionalization of the sport of snooker
In 1968, the World Professional Billiards & Snooker Association (WPBSA) was an umbrella organization for snooker. The next year the snooker world championship returned in the knockout system . That year, John Spencer won the tournament, whose superior player in the 1970s was in particular the Welshman Ray Reardon .
In July 1969, BBC2's program director , David Attenborough , looked for a way to highlight the benefits of the new color television . Due to the colored snooker balls and the fact that snooker was known for being able to be recorded without great effort, the Pot Black tournament was introduced, which was shown as a series on television after the playout. A total of eight players and Ted Lowe as commentator took part in the first edition of the tournament . As the format enjoyed great success, it was continued. With this, various participants became well known and their income increased.
In 1972, Alex Higgins was the first entertainer to get more attention as a snooker player when he won the World Snooker Championship on his first attempt . This also increased the public's interest in snooker sport, and while sponsors from the tobacco industry in particular began to show an interest in snooker, the BBC began broadcasting highlights of the respective snooker world championships as well as the Masters invitation tournament introduced in 1975 , and built on the broadcast continuously over the following years. A year later, a snooker world rankings based on the results of the world championship were drawn up for the first time . In 1977 Mike Watterson's World Snooker Championship found a permanent home at the Crucible Theater in Sheffield, and in 1979 Terry Griffiths won the world title for the first time in a decade for anyone other than Spencer, Reardon and Higgins. Due to the fact that Griffiths played his first professional season, this world title led to an increase in the number of professional players in the following years.
After a player from overseas became world champion for the first time in 1980 with the Canadian Cliff Thorburn , the 1980s were playfully played by Steve Davis with the first officially recognized maximum break at the 1982 Classic as well as a total of six world championship titles and also entrepreneurial by Davis' manager Barry Hearn and his company Matchroom Sport , which signed numerous players and organized snooker tournaments around the world. During these years the sport of snooker experienced a huge boom. In addition to the BBC, the private broadcaster ITV has now also broadcast snooker tournaments and the ratings have reached record highs. During the final of the 1985 World Snooker Championship, over 18.5 million Britons watched a few minutes after midnight as Dennis Taylor against Steve Davis by punching the last blacks in the final on the colors of the very last frame of the game and thus also the game at 18 : 17 won. As a result, various new and in some cases now surpassed records have been set, for example for the highest audience rating after midnight or for a sports broadcast in Great Britain. Davis won all other world championships of the 1980s with the exception of Alex Higgins' second world title in 1982 and Joe Johnson's 1986 world title . Thus, over time, snooker has become a successfully marketed sport.
Opening of the professional tour and first decade in the new century
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While Davis seemed unbeatable until the end of the 1980s, he was replaced in the role of the superior player at the start of the new decade by the Scot Stephen Hendry , who won a total of seven world championships between 1990 and 1999 and also set numerous records. During the same period, the audience found another favorite in Jimmy White alongside Alex Higgins, when the former played in six World Cup finals between 1984 and 1994 and lost each time - mostly Stephen Hendry. Despite competition from White and John Parrott and in parts also to Ken Doherty and Peter Ebdon , Hendry was considered a dominant player in the 1990s.
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In the meantime, for the 1991/92 season, the WPBSA opened the professional tour to all players who were willing to pay an entry fee, which increased the number of participants in the tournaments to over 700 players. A year after the opening, a group of three players, later also known as the golden vintage , came on the tour, consisting of the Englishman Ronnie O'Sullivan , the Scottish John Higgins and the Welshman Mark Williams . While O'Sullivan won the UK Championship a week before his 18th birthday and played the fastest maximum break at the 1997 World Snooker Championship against Mick Price , but was only able to win his first World Championship title in the new decade due to personal problems, Higgins was considered to be early on regular tournament winner who was put under pressure by Williams, especially around the turn of the millennium. All three players have won the World Cup several times, with O'Sullivan five times, Higgins four times and Williams three times. Between 1998 and 2013 they won eleven of the sixteen world championships. On February 5, 1998, the World Confederation of Billiard Sports was officially recognized as the world billiards association by the International Olympic Committee and has been a member of the Association of IOC Recognized International Sports Federations ever since .
In the first years of the new millennium, snooker developed into a sport of global proportions. Even though tournaments have been played in various countries around the world, especially in Australia and Canada since the 1960s , and snooker and other billiards have been part of the World Games since 2001 , there was a snooker boom in Asia after the young Chinese Ding Junhui won the China Open and the UK Championship , which was also supported worldwide by Eurosport , who obtained the broadcast rights for every major snooker tournament. This growth in global popularity was also supported by various players such as the Australian and 2010 world champion Neil Robertson or the crowd favorite Paul Hunter , while on the other hand snooker lost one of its most important sources of income due to the tobacco advertising ban in Great Britain and also due to the unprepared management level of the WPBSA which consisted mostly of former and inexperienced professional players, began to shrink. Audience ratings also fell on television, partly due to the increased number of different television channels. As a result, Ian Doyles - Stephen Hendry's manager - and his company 110sport tried to form a competitive tour , but this was prevented by bonus payments to the leading players by the world association.
The Hearn Revolution from 2009
Because of the growing resentment of the players, because their income from snooker had become too low due to the sharp decrease in the number of ranking tournaments, the then chairman of the WPBSA, Sir Rodney Walker, put a motion of no confidence in December 2009, which was voted 32:24 for his election ended. Shortly thereafter, despite the discomfort of some players, Barry Hearn , who had dominated the 1980s snooker with his company Matchroom Sport , was elected as the new chairman of the WPBSA with a narrow vote . In the years that followed, Hearn - who already resigned the WPBSA chairmanship in 2010 in favor of Jason Ferguson and became chairman of the WPBSA's commercial arm, World Snooker - established the Players Tour Championship, a tournament series with numerous tournaments in Europe and Asia and increased at the same time the number of world ranking tournaments from six to over twenty. These tournaments were held in numerous countries around the world, especially in Central Europe and Asia. As a result, the market was so saturated that Hearn or the world association was in a significantly better negotiating position. In addition, a new form of the snooker world ranking list was introduced and the prize money for the tournaments was mostly increased significantly. There are also efforts to have snooker recognized as an Olympic sport .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Dominic Dale : The History Of Cues. World Snooker Tour , January 22, 2015, accessed January 13, 2020 .
- ^ A b c d e Peter Clare, Peter Ainsworth: Origins of Snooker. EA Clare & Son Ltd., 2018, accessed January 17, 2020 .
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y Hector Nunns, David Hendon: Full History of Snooker. World Professional Billiards & Snooker Association , 2016, accessed January 12, 2020 .
- ↑ a b c d e f g h Ashok Kumar: Snooker and Billiards . Discovery Publishing House, New Delhi 1999, ISBN 978-81-7141-475-8 , pp. 1-13 .
- ↑ a b c d Chris Turner: World Professional Championship - World Ranking Event. (No longer available online.) Chris Turner's Snooker Archive, 2008, archived from the original on November 21, 2011 ; accessed on January 16, 2020 (English).
- ↑ a b c d e f History of Snooker - a Timeline. World Professional Billiards & Snooker Association , accessed January 16, 2020 .
- ↑ 1985: The black ball final. BBC Sport , April 18, 2003, accessed January 26, 2020 .
- ^ A b Ronnie O'Sullivan , Simon Hattenstone: Running . 3. Edition. Copress Verlag, Grünwald 2017, ISBN 978-3-7679-1167-3 , pp. 59–68 (English: Running . London 2013. Translated by Johannes Kratzsch).