At the start of a frame, the object balls are positioned on the table as shown in illustration A. Starting with the cue ball in the "D", the first player executes a break-off shot by striking the cue ball with the tip of their cue, what is billiards aiming to hit any of the red balls in the triangular pack. The moment people start placing items on it is the moment the table starts to wear down quickly. Naturally, most people also want a pool table felt color that goes well with the table and the room it will be in. A standard full-size snooker table measures 12 ft × 6 ft (365.8 cm × 182.9 cm), with a rectangular playing surface measuring 11 ft 8.5 in × 5 ft 10.0 in (356.9 cm × 177.8 cm). When playing away from a touching ball, the player is not required to strike another object ball. If the cue ball finishes in contact with an object ball, a touching ball is called. Failure to make contact with a red ball constitutes a foul, which results in penalty points being awarded to the opponent. The tip of the cue must only make contact with the cue ball and is never used for striking any of the reds or colours directly.

As a result, it’s always best to agree upon common rules before the game starts, to make sure all players are on the same page. Each segment of the string (bead) represents one point as the players can move one or several beads along the string. It involves 16 balls, which are made up of 15 object balls and one cue ball. Essentially, throw is the effect that the cue ball has on an object ball. If, after a foul, the next player cannot cleanly strike both sides of the object ball, the referee may call a free ball, allowing the player to nominate any other ball in place of the object ball they might normally have played. Hit the cue ball using the other cue ball and then target the red ball, which should not be pocketed to earn two points. A traditional snooker scoreboard resembles an abacus and records the points scored by each player for the current frame in units and twenties, as well as the frame scores. A player wins a frame by scoring more points than their opponent. The goal is to make sure that you get awarded the most points. The player must then play away from that ball without moving it or else the player will concede penalty points.

Even if the cue ball is struck in precisely the same manner, the effect of the nap will differ according to whether the ball is directed towards the baulk line or towards the opposite end of the table. We have mentioned that you will need nine to 15 pool balls, along with the white cue ball. Players including 2005 world champion Shaun Murphy have claimed that a 128-player professional tour is financially unsustainable. Chalk in small cubes is applied uniformly to the cue tip permitting the players to strike the cue ball off centre on purpose in order to impart a spinning motion, called "side" in Great Britain and "English" in the United States. Each player has a cue stick (or simply a "cue"), not less than 3 ft (91.4 cm) in length, which is used to strike the cue ball. As a professional English billiards and snooker player himself, Davis raised the game from a recreational pastime to a professional sporting activity. Following a foul, the incoming player has ball-in-hand anywhere on the table, unless the foul occurred on the break shot, as noted previously. The rules, as officially codified in the Billiard Congress of America's rule book, were periodically revised in the years following.

Not long after that, in the years leading up to the Civil War, the house took on a completely different role. However, the British public's interest in snooker had waned significantly by the late 2000s. Warning that the sport was "lurching into terminal crisis", The Guardian newspaper predicted in 2010 that snooker would cease to exist as a professional sport within ten years. However, lower-ranked professional players struggled to make a living from the sport, especially after paying tournament entry fees, travel, and other expenses. A Women's Professional Snooker Championship (now the World Women's Snooker Championship) was created in 1934 for top female players. In 1985, an estimated 18.5 million viewers stayed up until the early hours of the morning to watch the conclusion of the World Championship final between Dennis Taylor and Steve Davis, a record viewership in the UK for any broadcast on BBC Two or any broadcast after midnight. UK-the BBC dedicated 400 hours to snooker in 2007, compared to just 14 minutes 40 years earlier. Cigarette brand Embassy sponsored the World Snooker Championship for 30 consecutive years from 1976 to 2005, one of the longest-running deals in British sports sponsorship. Years later, the table game was given a name derived from the French terms bille, which means ball and billiart, meaning wooden sticks.