Metric Snooker

For the past few years, I am following the snooker tournaments. The tournament only nature of the competition and the limitations of income for many players made me think of ways to improve the British snooker.

My initial change came as the dimensional change to the snooker table and the balls to make them metric. Metric snooker will be played in leagues. Each league will have 16 players. The games will begin on January and end on December. There will be four seasons within the year. Each season will start with a league phase. Where each player will play against the rest of the players once. The game will be played for 3 frames. Each frame will have monetary and point value for the player. Within two weeks, each player will play 15 matches. This phase will allow each player to earn at least some money and the points earned will be used to determine the rankings. The next two weeks will be a tournament time. Each player’s opponent will be determined by the rankings from the previous two weeks. During the tournament every frame won will have a monetary value. The winner of each phase will get extra bonus. The objective is to encourage players to fight till the end. Because with classical snooker, looser on decider or white washed gets the same money which is not fair. After the tournament, there will be another two weeks of league play. The points earned during these two weeks will affect the ranking of the next tournament.  These small tournaments rankings will be reset after the tournament. However, there will be a seasonal ranking which will keep accumulating. After two months, the players would have played two league phases and two tournaments. During the third month the players will play a major tournament. Each player’s opponent will be determined by the total rankings from the previous two months. This tournament will be played over higher frame count and have higher monetary award. At the end of this major tournament, season champion will be determined. This three-month cycle will repeat four more times to complete the year. At the end of the year the overall champion will be awarded. Additionally, the last four at the rankings will be sent to the sub league and the top four players from the sub league will be a part of the upper league for the next season.

The metric snooker will be played over a robotic table. The balls will be placed using auto grabber (The grabber will hide inside the side panels when not in use.). Each ball's position will be known by the robotic table. Therefore, at any time the balls would be perfectly repositioned by the robot. There will be no referee on the table but a VAR system will be used. Every shot of the game will be saved with the exact location of each ball. This know how will be used during the training of the player. For example, during training, the player will ask the table to reposition the balls to a position where the player missed during the game so that he or she can retry the exact shot. It's metric snooker version of the chess notation system to record the moves of the pieces. More importantly this technology will allow the players to practice alone and improve their weaknesses. The objective is to minimize the gap between the players to have a more challenging competition.

The games will be played in a small venue where each sit will have a table on its front. So that the audience can eat and drink during the event. It will be like a bar with a dome and two snooker tables in the middle. The snooker tables will be surrounded by protective glass and sound deadeners, to allow the audience to entertain freely without disturbing the players. The player section will be air conditioned to maintain a certain humidity which affects potting. Continuous matches throughout the year will keep the venue busy all year long.

The top two floors of the venue will have flats for 16 players. This will allow the players to sleep or relax between intense weekly schedules. Additionally, it will guarantee an accommodation for the foreign players.