First off, a snooker table is a cue sport similair to billiards or pool.  Snooker is played on a 12 ft by 6 ft table which is 3.6m by 1.8m.  Snooker is played with a cue, a (white) cue ball, 15 red balls and the colored (Coloured since it’s a UK game) snooker balls.  While red balls are worth one point per ball, each of the colored balls has a different value assigned to it. The points scores go as follows;

How to Play Snooker - How to Position Snooker Balls

• Red – 1 Point
• Yellow – 2 Points
• Green – 3 Points
• Brown – 4 Points
• Blue – 5 Points
• Pink – 6 Points
• Black – 7 Points

These balls must be positioned on to the table as shown in the image on teh right.

So how exactly do you play snooker?

Snooker is more than spots and stripes, the basic rules are however very simple.

• You may keep going until you do not pot a ball,each play of this kind is called a ‘break’
• You must pot a red before you can pot a color, if you pot a color after a red, you must pot another red before you can pot another color.
• You can pot the colors in any order, you should aim for the highest points.
• After each color is potted it is replaced on the table, until all the reds have been potted.
• Once all the reds have been potted, then you have to pot teh colors in order, from lowest first!
• If you commit a foul you will lose points.

The points you lose on fouls in snooker can be caused under several circumstances.  The minimum you can lose is 4 points, however you can lose more if you pot a ball of a higher value (You will lose the value of the ball). To summarise

• White Ball Pot = 4 Point Penalty
• 60 second timelimit exceeded = 4 Point Penalty
• If the white hits the wrong ball = Value of the ball
• If the wrong ball is potted first, then the value of this ball.

Unlike snooker, after a foul has been committed, the opposing player can play the ball where it is, or pass the shot and let the offending player take the shot again.  This is to prevent ‘tap shots’ whena  player is snookered

And there you have it, the basics on how to play snooker!

I feel as if I should warn you however, learning how to play snooker is not as easy as learning the rules.  Snooker is an incrediblely difficult sport to become good at, and while many people spend years playing, they fail how to learn snooker!