Ronnie O’Sullivan at the German Masters, 2012. Photograph by DerHexer, via Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

When I arrived in Sheffield, England, last year and walked to the Crucible Theatre, it was not immediately clear that I was approaching the mecca of a sport watched by millions. Sheffield feels more like a large village, whose greatest claim to historical fame is industrializing so-called crucible steel, which revolutionized the cutlery trade. Today it has a reputation for being a sporting city—soccer foremost, then rugby, then ice hockey, then basketball (Minnesota Timberwolves head coach Chris Finch spent ten years playing for and coaching the Sheffield Sharks). By far the most-watched sport in Sheffield, however, is snooker. Last year, more people in China watched the final of the World Snooker Championship than Americans watched the Super Bowl. Yet few Americans even know the game exists. 

Snooker is pool’s nightmarishly difficult cousin. While a pool table can range from seven to nine feet long, a snooker table spans twelve feet of green baize. In place of five-inch pockets, players aim for targets just three and a half inches wide. There are twenty-one balls on the table—fifteen reds, arranged in a pyramid on one end, and six in a range of colors, lined up into a pointillistic T. Players must alternate between pocketing a red ball (worth one point) and any “color”—a somewhat technical term that means any shade besides red: yellow, green, brown, blue, pink, black (in ascending order of value). Referees return the colored balls to their designated spots on the table to allow the cycle to continue, until every red has been potted. Snooker requires thinking at least three moves ahead: a good shot always secures position to make a second ball at the correct angle to play for a third. When no offensive opportunity presents itself, players aim to hide the cue ball behind one of the colored balls up-table. To prevent the opponent from having a clear view of the next ball is to “snooker” them. 

Games are won when there aren’t enough points left for opponents to overcome their deficits (typically seventy to eighty points). Players are regularly seen hunched over the table, mentally calculating which colors they need to pocket to ensure victory. But great matches transcend the goal of simply winning. Even when a player has technically triumphed, they are allowed to continue shooting until they miss. These technically pointless displays of skill, however, become a game within the game—a test of meeting certain scoring thresholds. Scoring a hundred points during a single visit is called a century. A “maximum” is a score of 147, achievable only when players exclusively pocket the black ball (worth seven points) after each red. After a successful maximum, the referee removes one white glove to shake the player’s hand. 

Each April, snooker’s most avid fans embark on a pilgrimage to Sheffield for the World Snooker Championship, the sport’s most prestigious affair by far. But walking into the Crucible felt like attending a community play. The theater accommodates just nine hundred and eighty people, and its limited capacity means no large crowds descend on Sheffield. Neighboring streets and pubs retain a distinctly local atmosphere. Inside, guests silently fill panels of seats surrounding a central sunken pit. The small capacity heightens the intensity; the audience looms closely over the action. (The Welsh snooker star Mark Williams once reached into the audience midmatch to help himself to a spectator’s candy.) Players are not granted the luxury of an anonymous, distant crowd. “The Crucible can be a very lonely place, despite being in the company of so many,” the 1979 world champion Terry Griffiths once said. “In fact, it’s the company of so many that’s the problem.” 

As I chatted with other snooker devotees in the Crucible, I realized I was a demographic outlier: American and young. The audience embodied the game’s subdued energy—perhaps out of respect for the event, or maybe because most in attendance could accurately be described as near geriatric. Snooker fandom has translated poorly across the generations in Britain. Only two British players younger than thirty-four qualified for the World Championship this year. In China, however, the sport has grown exponentially over the past decade. Three hundred thousand snooker halls now line city streets across Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou. As attention to the sport shifts across the globe, tournaments now regularly pit a slate of aging UK stars against a flock of young Chinese players that have suddenly begun to dominate the game.

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