Red Balls in Pots
The goal of the game is to fire and pocket the object balls in the correct order to get more points than your opponent. The balls are positioned at the jolt of a frame, and the players hit it by striking the cue ball with the tip of the cue. Their goal is to score points by putting one of the red balls into a pocket. If pocketing a ball isn’t an option, the player must shoot a ball without fouling. If the striker makes a red ball, he or she must shoot one of the other six coloured balls.
The player must then shoot another red ball, followed by another colour, and so on. This technique continues until the striker is unable to hit the target. At this point, the opposing player steps forward to take the next shot. If the coloured balls have been potted but the red balls remain, the coloured balls are re-potted and placed in their respective locations.
Colored Balls in Pots
The game continues until all of the red balls have been potted and only six coloured balls remain on the table. At this point, the coloured balls should be potted in order of value, starting with yellow, which is worth two points, then green, which is worth three points, brown, which is worth four points, blue, which is worth five points, pink, which is worth six points, and finally black, which is worth seven points.
Winner
The player with the most points wins when the final ball is potted. If the scores are tied after all of the balls have been potted, the black is returned to its original place as a tiebreaker. If a player believes there aren’t enough points on the table to beat the challenger’s score, he or she can compromise a frame while on strike. This is a common occurrence in professional snooker.
Scoring
When a player’s opponent commits a foul, he earns points. A foul might happen for a variety of reasons. A player commits a foul when he or she fails to hit the correct ball, such as striking a colour first when hitting a red, or shooting the cue ball into the pocket.
The former can happen if the player is unable to escape from a snooker situation, which is one in which the previous player has put the cue ball in such a way that no legal ball can be struck directly without also hitting an illegal ball. If the black ball is involved, a foul earns a minimum of four points and a maximum of seven points.
A break is the total number of consecutive points (excluding fouls) a player earns during a single visit to the table. For example, a player who gets a break of 15 hits a red then a black, then a red then a pink, before deteriorating to pot the following red. In snooker, the traditional maximum break is to pot all reds with blacks, then all colours, for a total of 147 points.
