147

When I was growing up, my family would celebrate Thanksgiving at the home of my dad's folks. The first thing my brother and I would do is head straight to the basement and roll off the protective dust cover from the antique pool table. My cousins, who were a bit older, would always join us and we'd play doubles until the grownups came down to take over. On the wall there was a rack that held a bunch of cracked, ancient-looking red balls as well as one each of green, brown, yellow, blue, pink and black, none of which had any numbers. For snooker, I was told. I never learned the rules of snooker back then, but now when I think of playing snooker on a pool table it's rather amusing.

Just standing in front of a proper 6x12 snooker table is daunting. On YouTube there are several videos of players making "maximum breaks" in frames of snooker. Most of them are of Ronnie O'Sullivan, who makes it look effortless. For brevity's sake, a maximum break is 147 points (there are rare exceptions where the score can be higher). There are 15 reds (one point each) which remain off the table after being "potted" (pocketed). After a red is potted, a different colored ball may then be potted. The other colors range from 2-7 points each. But it's the potting of the black ball ("a snooker player's delight," as David McCumber puts it) that allows you to run up the highest amount of points. That's because each black potted is 7 points. Until the very end, all the non-red balls are placed back onto the table after being potted. Watching this video is an excellent blueprint for learning how to shoot a 147. However, a 147 is a very rare achievement and one should be prepared to miss an awful lot of shots along the way. I played for an hour a couple weeks ago and it took me most of the hour simply to get all the balls off the table in proper succession. I think this O'Sullivan 147 clip is the best video in terms of camera work. Check out how the focus shifts beautifully on the opening break shot.