How To Play A Snooker Game

What I'm about to show you is the complete step-by-step guide of how to play a game of snooker from right at the very start and until the final ball is potted. This is Break From Life. Welcome back if it's your first time watching one of our videos and it's fantastic to have you here. To be able to start off a game of snooker well you need to have a good understanding of how to play a break off shot. On this shot you're trying to make it as difficult as possible for your opponent to pot a ball as well as trying to set the game up for you to get an easy chance on your next shot but how do you do this? To start off with you need to work out which side of the pack you're going to hit. This shot needs to be played with right hand side whereas this shot needs to be played with left hand side. You just want to play the shot that requires the side spin that you're most confident using. For me that's probably right hand side. The fewer balls you move the fewer pots you're going to be leaving on so ideally you want to be striking the end red here and the best way to play this shot is to strike the cue ball here with as little side as you think you can get away with. This will prevent the white from spinning too much on the cloth. Ideally you're trying to get back as close to the bulk cushion as possible while preventing your opponent from seeing the edge of the pack and the pocket with the outside colour. Hazen is from Alexandra in Egypt. For the rest of the game then you have the objective of trying to prevent your opponent from potting a ball on the next shot and you can do this in one of two ways. The first is by potting a ball yourself. This may seem obvious but it will guarantee you have the next shot and the second is to focus on where you're leaving the cue ball to prevent your opponent from having a shot to go at. You'll often get a good chance in a frame when your opponent misses a pot but you can't ever rely on a player missing a shot even if you think they're quite likely to do so because every now and again someone will surprise you and this can result in you losing quite a lot of frames. I've split this guide up into three sections. The start of the frame, the middle of the frame where you have the best chance of scoring and the end of the frame where there's a single object ball remaining and any mistakes could cost you dear but let's start at the beginning. Ideally you want to get the first chance and take a point's advantage because crucially you won't be having to chase points so much later in the game and this can give you a huge advantage because shots like this black are already hard enough without me knowing I have to pot it to try and keep the game alive. You don't want your opponent to get in first and that's why the first few safety shots are absolutely crucial. Predominantly you'll be playing the cue ball back to the bulk end of the table trying to leave as much distance between it and the reds as possible whilst trying to catch the reds thin and prevent them going into the danger areas which would leave your opponent an easy long pot. At the start of the frame you want to assess how you're most likely to win it either by picking off odd balls and playing safe or if you're confident enough to try and win the frame with sizeable breaks because this small tactic can have a huge impact on the result of the frame and too often I see a player lose a game because they've chosen the wrong option. Here for example if I want to keep the game tight I should play this long red because I'm very unlikely to leave anything if I miss and sometimes that might be the right shot for me but a well played attacking safety shot here will result in a higher scoring game and leave less up to chance. If I played the long red on the previous chance it's highly unlikely I would have scored more than a single point however just by playing one safety shot not only have I put my opponent in a lot of trouble but I've also created a situation where the next player to get in is highly likely to make a sizeable break. You've just got to decide whether or not that's the right thing to do in the current game you're playing and be aware it's possible for your opponent to escape from almost any difficult position you put them in. Penton1907 is from Istanbul, Turkey. The start of a game is all about developing a chance to score some points because the middle part of a game of snooker is where it all happens. This is the part where you can gain the biggest advantage over your opponent. Around this time in the frame you usually find you get at least one chance to make a break that's simpler than any other. This is the chance where the balls are exactly in the right place so long as you can be precise enough with your positional shots and the better your cue ball control is the higher the breaks you can make. This may seem difficult but it's really only playing three different positional shots over and over again. The first is the stun shot where you leave the cue ball almost exactly where the object ball was. The second shot is a run-through shot and this requires a little bit more control regarding the pace you play it at. You just want to work out where you want the cue ball to go and how hard to strike it before you play the shot. The third is a little bit more complicated but you still need to know how to play it and it's an angled stun shot. With this shot you're going to have to be able to It's incredibly crucial to be able to play all three of these shots right but these are the only three shots you need to know to be able to have a 50 plus break. To demonstrate this those are the only three shots I'm going to be using here. Whenever you get a chance like this and there's red around or above the black you want to get rid of it as quickly as you can. I'm playing back this side to avoid the chance of leaving myself awkward around this red. Finishing straight on the red would have been better but you don't want to take the chance of it finishing low so I've deliberately played above the red so I can just simply stun down again for the black. Here just by putting the black at the correct pace I'm going to cannon into the pink and this gives me a good chance of being on all three reds. From the black I want to play the red on the top cushion. This is a more difficult red so it requires a more accurate positional shot. Here I'm going to run through the white a little further than I'd normally be comfortable with just to make sure I've got a good angle on the red and why do I need the angle to be right? Well this means I can play it slowly and give the red the best possible chance of going in the pocket and allowing the white to come out naturally for the black but I didn't quite pop the red clean leaving myself with the hardest shot of the entire break. However I'm now back in perfect position and this is where break building really gets simple. Just by playing two little stun shots here I'm automatically going to be in position for the next two shots and all you've got to be able to do to make break building this straightforward is work out which shots you want to play next. You can then come up with a plan for yourself about how you want the cue ball to move around the table and it doesn't even matter if this goes slightly wrong because you can always come up with a new plan. It's all about getting you in the best place possible for when you get to the colours because when you get to the last few balls remaining anything can happen and the game becomes a little bit more of a lottery. So hopefully you won by this stage but sometimes just hanging on in there so you've got a chance can be a victory in itself. But hanging on the As I've said already the end of the game where you're down to just one object ball can become a complete lottery. You could be facing the hardest and most crucial shots you've played or game or have the chance to win with the easiest pots imaginable. It's possible you may be left a colour clearance so here's the most simple way possible of achieving it. However you finish on the yellow you want to try and get as straight as you can on the green. Once you've done this believe it or not that's half the work done. After that it's all about angles. Just pulling the cue ball back a little bit will leave you the perfect angle to just play a slow stun shot down onto the blue. If you can bounce the cue ball off the side cushion nicely here you'll have a simple choice to make on the blue. Are you left or right handed? Working this out means you can afford to finish high on the pink knowing you're going to be able to get your hand on the table. Doing it like this means you should never finish low on the pink giving yourself the best possible chance of having a straightforward black to pot. This is just a rough guide because the balls aren't always this perfectly placed and sometimes you won't have a pot on at all. However if you're unable to play a pot then your focus now needs to switch towards getting the object ball to a safe location. As there's only one object ball to play you want to make sure you're either getting the snooker or you're getting it to an adjacent cushion where it's almost impossible to pot. It doesn't matter anywhere near so much about the cue ball but if you get the chance you want to be leaving as much distance between the balls as you possibly can. If you can see a shot to leave the cue ball tight on the cushion this can really help you as well and I explain other shots you really need to be able to see and snooker in the video in the card right now. It's also on the Break From Life channel page along with a load of other videos to help you dominate the game and make the commitment to becoming a better player by which is hopefully exactly what Jack Scott from Gibraltar has done. So in general then you either want to be potting a ball or creating a situation that makes it difficult for your opponent to do the same because you can't expect your opponent to miss and leave you on or that you'll get a fair amount of chances. Tactics at the start of the frame are crucial to allow you to play the sort of game you want to play. Try to make the most of the few straightforward chances you may be given by staying in close position using the three basic break building shots because you'll find your game will drastically improve by just getting this one little area of it right. If you're still in position at the end of the game the colour clearance is so much more straightforward if you understand where you want the cue ball to be after every single shot. However if you don't have a straightforward pot on you need to be making sure you're keeping the object ball in a safe location. Towards the end hopefully you'll have a chance to win the game but these shots can be incredibly difficult and there can be an awful lot of pressure on them because they couldn't be any more vital. Your ability to play under pressure can be absolutely critical to having success in the game that's why I created the video how to pot under pressure in snooker. It shows you exactly how to cope with these situations or if you want to know more about aiming in snooker then try our video snooker aiming practice trick and remember don't just watch play and make the commitment to becoming a better player by subscribing to the channel and visit the website. See you later.