How Luck Can Play A Major Part In Professional Snooker Tournaments
I am going to write about the elements of luck which I have been witnessing whilst watching this years world snooker championship.
I am not a snooker player myself – I am actually involved with stuttering therapy and offering a cost reduction service whereby people are able to obtain cheap calls.
A kick
I am sure that most snooker players are aware of what a kick is, in snooker. Basically the ball lifts from the bed of the table and can cause the shot to go offline which can easily cause a missed attempted pot, the positional side to go astray or the safety shot to go wrong.
Many experts have being trying to work out why these kicks happen, to attempt to remove them from the game. Thus far they have been unsuccessful.
A ball drifting offline
I watched a match last night where the player attempted a pot into a middle pocket. He had played the shot with a lack of pace to give it every chance as it were and it was heading straight into the middle of the pocket. At the last moment is seemed to roll offline and it hit the jaw of the pocket, his opponent then cleared up the rest of the balls to win the frame.
The snooker player in question was less than impressed as one could no doubt imagine; the commentator actually stated that this had been a problem at this tournament ever since it started. We were told that once the snooker table and cloth had been set up it had been through rigorous checks to ensure that everything was in order. The commentator commented that with the large crowd in the arena and the atmosphere, that this could affect the roll of the table.
A dodgy bounce off a cushion
Some of the players have played a shot at what they believe is the correct speed or strength only to see the ball bounce off one of the cushions at an irregular speed. This again can affect their safety or positional play, which again can result in them losing a frame.
It can be very soul destroying to have a series of these bits of “bad luck”. Snooker can be one of the most frustrating games at times in any case as a player battles with the demons in his head and these unfortunate kicks and bad bounces off the cushion do little to improve the situation.