snooker
noun
Pocket billiards played with 15 red balls and 6 balls of other colors.
transitive verb
To lead (someone) into a situation in which all possible choices are undesirable.
I’ve never played snooker, nor watched anyone else play snooker. But apparently, it’s very similar to the game of pool, except using 21 colored balls instead of 16.
The snooker table is slightly larger. And the balls are also slightly larger. But the pockets are slightly smaller.
I’ve played my share of pool, especially before I got married. In fact, I met my future wife Darlene standing beside a pool table, holding a cue stick. She was a better player than I was, which I think added to the attraction. Except I always had to bring plenty of quarters, because the loser always pays for the next game.
Unlike pool, snooker doesn’t have an ‘8 Ball’. So when you’re watching snooker, you would never say, “That guy is behind the 8 Ball.”
That was my general situation, however. Behind the 8 Ball. Both before and after my marriage.
It turns out that the word ‘snooker’ has a couple of meanings. When playing snooker, if your opponent leaves the cue ball in a position, such that another ball blocks the ball you need to sink, then you’re usually forced to play the cue ball off a cushion.
You have been ‘snookered’.
So ‘snooker’ and ‘behind the 8 Ball’ have very similar meanings.
Darlene probably could have beat me at snooker, if we had ever played it. But we didn’t. We just went through a divorce, which naturally involved getting snookered, in a certain sense.
I’m thinking about snooker this morning because, for the first time in history, the Men’s World Snooker Championship was won by a person from Communist China: 28-year-old Zhao Xintong.
Zhao defeated former World Champion Mark Williams 18-12 to win the £500,000 prize. That’s about $678,200 USD, but I imagine Zhao was paid the prize in British pounds, considering the continuing decline of the US dollar.
This victory comes on the heels of another snooker star from Communist China, 21-year-old Bai Yulu, who won the Women’s World Snooker Championship in 2024 and 2025.
Reportedly, snooker was invented by British soldiers in India, as a way to relax when they weren’t oppressing the East Indians. So it’s probably not to surprising that the world champion snooker players have traditionally been British. Between 1936 and 2022, the world champion snooker players — that is, the male players — all came from the U.K.
Then in 2023, the winner hailed from Belgium: Luca Brecel, sometimes known as the Belgian Bullet. (Belgium is not part of the U.K. Not by a long shot.)
Zhao Xintong is the first player from Asia to win the Men’s World Championship. And also the first from a Communist country. Zhao’s idol, as he rose up through the snooker ranks, was Ding Junhui (丁俊晖), also from Communist China. Ding came in second at the 2016 World Championship tournament, and stated at the time that 100 million Chinese viewers had tuned in to watch him play.
For comparison, about 120 million people watched the 2024 Super Bowl, and about 175 million watched the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton in 2011.
Zhao’s snooker victory this year was watched by an estimated 150 million television viewers in China, with no wedding ring necessary.
On the female side of the snooker table, Asian women have pretty much dominated the World Champion winner’s circle since 2015. According to the Beijing Times:
The popularity of snooker in China has been growing at an astonishing rate, with an estimated 50 million people playing the game in the country. This surge in interest can be traced back to the emergence of a young Chinese player named Ding Junhui, who quickly became a national hero in China due to his talent and success on the snooker circuit.
For some reason, snooker has never really taken off in the U.S. We have always preferred the game with the 16 numbered balls.
But ‘snooker’ can also apply to politics.
Back when I was a kid, the U.S. could pretty much ‘snooker’ any other nation, in terms of international trade. It probably helped that we had the biggest military, and the strongest currency, and the biggest ego.
Seems to me that the world is changing rapidly, and — for the foreseeable future — the snooker champions might be coming from China.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all. You can read more stories on his Substack account.