snooker championships

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And, in sports news you may never hear,

KARACHI: Mohammad Asif, Asjad Iqbal, Shahram Changezi and Sohail Shahzad qualified for the semifinals of the 4th National Ranking Snooker Championship after winning their respective matches at NBP Sports Complex Billiards Hall here on Thursday.

The Pakistan News Service reported the story.

Pakistan, a place viewed from the country I live in as a hideout for Afghan 'terrorists,' a country that has nuclear capabilities, and a land providing a diplomatic conundrum that might tax a genius, is also home to this once upper-crust sporting championship.

Sometimes, in the midst of all the things a person does know, the sheer enormity of what is not known comes calling.

Of all the games that involved cue sticks and balls (cue sports), I found snooker the most enragingly elegant. The table always seemed to be enormous when compared to pocket billiards or billiards without any pockets. I don't suppose my comparison of table sizes was accurate, but because snooker balls are smaller than those used on billiards tables, the table tends to look bigger ... gigunda in fact. A standard table is 12-feet by 6, but targeting an object ball at the far end of the table can feel like a sniper taking a 1,000-yard shot without a scope.

Naturally (who the hell else?), it was the colonizing Brits who invented the game and it would be many years before the hoi polloi would be admitted to snooker clubs. But pretty soon, the delights and challenges of the game -- irrespective of class -- filtered down until even a schnook like me might give it a whirl.

One of the hard parts of the game is the simple architecture of the pockets. In regular pocket billiards (pool), the pockets are angled on the edges. A player can luck out with an 'almost' shot if the ball bounces off one of the angles and then drops in for a score. Not so in snooker, where the pocket edges are rounded and an 'almost' shot (one not shot directly into the maw) simply bounces back and forth in the opening until it runs out of steam. A loser! Snooker demands a spot-on accuracy ... over vast reaches ... and there are other difficulties that would disqualify all but the most determined and attentive.

I never was much good at snooker. Billiards (the one without the pockets) was my game of choice. But it makes me happy to know that in a world I may think I know something about, someone is doing something delightful or perhaps not so delightful ... and I haven't ... got ... a ... clue!
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