Why snooker is a sport

And he would have been well within his rights. Snooker has a very enjoyable World Championship, currently under way up in Sheffield: I favour leaving it at that. We could call it the Olympic Lames and it would include as many table-based activities as the global sporting fraternity saw fit. I am willing to put myself forward as the inaugural president of the International Olympic Lames Association.

Do please shout if you are with me. But they have plenty in common. Both are great drivers, Brits and born winners. But most importantly, both are devoted to wearing silly hats.

They say being a great driver is 90 per cent about the state of your head. I had never realised it was meant so literally. The tickets are only just being released today and the bulk of them will change hands for well into five figures per seat.

What a shambles. Fight of a generation it might be but this endless, sordid wrangling over the tiny percentages of a vast profit leaves a nasty taste in the mouth. Sporting moment of the week comes from Switzerland, where a match between football clubs Embrach and Raterschen was abandoned after thousands of migrating frogs invaded the pitch.

There are, I think, too few Biblical plagues causing disruption in modern football: locusts, rivers of blood, burning hail, dust turning into lice and so on. It would liven up the classified football results if there were more.

ES Money. The Escapist. Pool and darts are sports, but chess is only a game. Matthew, Atlanta GA Pool is no more or no less than an exacting science! John, Beecher Ill. USA Pool is a sport whilst professionals are playing or the game is being taken seriously, whereas it is a game whilst being played lightheartedly or whilst drinking. When it is played in your local pub on a friday night it is a game.

Where do you draw the line? This includes playing a safety shot in pool. So pool is a sport, darts and chess are games. Golf, of course, is a good walk spoiled. Roddy Black, Shanghai China To make it a sport, you have to sweat a little, and I'm not talking about the nervous kind.

I mean sweat from running from base to base, or from one side of a court to the other. How can you put basketball and pool in the same category? Brian Stromberg, Seattle, USA I would classify pool as a "sport" due to the fact that they both have the same characteristics. They are both a game of skill that involve a level of competitiveness that is measured by the keeping of scores to monitor performance. Lisa, Preston, England I would classify a sport as any game played by 2 players or 2 teams where both players or teams occupy and compete on the playing surface at the same time.

In this case games like football, baseball and the like are sports, as is tennis, volleyball and badminton. Games like pool, darts, golf, and curling do not meet those criteria. In pool, both players occupy the playing surface and can influence the other's game, but they do not compete at the same time. Same for curling.

In golf, players can compete at the same time theoretically but the rules forbid influencing the other player's game. Although pool and the others take great skill, they do not meet the criteria for sport. Just my humble opinion. Then metres run in lanes is a game, but metres scrum for the inside track is a sport. Andrew Leslie, Stuttgart Germany As Hemingway may or may not have said: "There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.

Buckland, Geneva Switzerland There are 2 criteria to apply to determine if an activity is a sport or not. If professionals in an activity smoke whilst participating in it, then it's not a sport. If the garments worn whilst participating in an activity include a nice pair of slacks, then it's not a sport. Therefore, it's fair to say that by virtue of contravening both rules, pool is not a sport.

There were a lot of times I found myself actually sweating while playing pool, especially when I play for 20 hours continously by myself. Pool relies on hand-eye coordination and, in the pubs I play in, the roll of the table. Pool is at the lazy end of sports. Let me think that one through again Luke, Wellington, New Zealand Why are so many of you hung up on the smoking aspect. If it is because smoking is unhealthy then any "sport" that has drug takers cannot be a sport.

Out goes most of athletics, football, baseball, gridiron football, etc, etc Dean, newton UK It's both really isn't it. Football is a sport and you have a game of that. The same as others like tennis, cricket, rugby etc. However I don't think something like monopoly could be considered a sport, as it isn't physically challenging - unless you end up fighting over who's gunna be the boot. Maybe things like darts and pool, that are played inside could be described as a 'relaxed sport'?

Scarlett, Cardiff, UK It's both a sport and a game. Pool, cricket and running are all sports in that they require physical skill. Pool, cricket and chess are all games in that they only make sense as competitions, and rely on arbitrary rules to make winning or losing mean anything.

Running is not a game in that you can enjoy it without competing with anyone, or following any rules. Caroline, Wellington, New Zealand A sport requires two prerequisites: it needs a body in which to play it ie a brain in a jar would NOT be able to play sports, only games , and there needs to be competition at a professional level.

James Corwin, Leeds, UK Pool is definitely not a sport, as it is just a mini game of its more skillful counterpart, snooker, therefore only a game.

Would you consider mini-golf a sport? K, London, UK Darts, pool, snooker and chess are not sports. A sport requires physical assertion, athleticism, skill and stamina in my opinion.

The next thing people will say is that Poker is a sport. Get real people these are games and not sports. If the player pots a color, the players gains points, depending on the value of the ball. A player may also gain points when the opposing player fouls.

Fouls include hitting the wrong ball, and also potting the cue ball into a pocket. A snooker match consists of an undetermined number of frames. A frame is basically one game which lasts until the last ball is potted.

The player who wins the most number of frames wins the snooker match. Share: Facebook Twitter.