Snooker is a cue sport played on a rectangular billiards table covered with a green cloth called baize, with six pockets: one at each corner and one in the middle of each long side. First played by British Army officers stationed in India in the second half of the 19th century, the game is played with 22 balls, comprising a white cue ball, 15 red balls and 6 other balls—a yellow, green, brown, blue, pink and black—collectively called 'the colours'. Using a snooker cue, the individual players or teams take turns to strike the cue ball to pot other balls in a predefined sequence, accumulating points for each successful pot and for each foul committed by the opposing player or team. An individual frame of snooker is won by the player who has scored the most points, and a snooker match ends when a player wins a predetermined number of frames.
James Warren White is an English professional snooker player who has won four seniors World titles. Nicknamed "The Whirlwind" because of his fluid, swift and attacking style of play, White is the 1980 World Amateur Champion, 2009 Six-red World champion, a record four-time World Seniors Champion, 2019 Seniors 6-Red World Champion and 1984 World Doubles champion with Alex Higgins.
Steve Davis is an English retired professional snooker player who is currently a commentator, DJ, electronic musician and author. He dominated professional snooker in the 1980s, when he reached eight World Snooker Championship finals in nine years, won six world titles, and held the world number one ranking for seven consecutive seasons. He won 28 ranking titles during his career, placing him fifth on the all-time list, behind Ronnie O'Sullivan (41), Stephen Hendry (36), John Higgins (31), and Judd Trump (29). The first player to make an officially recognised maximum break in professional competition, at the 1982 Classic, he was also the first to earn £1 million in career prize money. He is the only snooker player to have won the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award, which he received in 1988.
Efren Manalang Reyes, popularly known by the nicknames "Bata" and "the Magician", is a Filipino professional pool player, who is widely regarded as the greatest pool player of all time, and especially famed for his skill at the challenging one-pocket discipline. In 2003, he was inducted into the Billiard Congress of America's Hall of Fame.
Tony Drago is a Maltese former professional snooker and pool player.
Ronald Antonio O'Sullivan is an English professional snooker player. Widely recognised as one of the most talented and accomplished players in snooker history, he has won the World Snooker Championship seven times, a modern-era record he holds jointly with Stephen Hendry. He has also won a record eight Masters titles and a record eight UK Championship titles for a total of 23 Triple Crown titles, the most achieved by any player. He holds the record for the most ranking titles, with 41, and has held the top ranking position multiple times.
Quinten Hann is an Australian former professional pool and snooker player. He was the 1999 WEPF World Eight-ball Champion and the 1994 IBSF World Under-21 Snooker Champion. His highest snooker break was a 141 which he made at the 1997 Grand Prix tournament. In February 2006, he was banned from pro snooker for eight years for match-fixing at the 2005 China Open, shortly before which he had resigned his membership of the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA).
Lynette Horsburgh is a Scottish-English semi-professional, world champion pool and national champion snooker player, as well as an international-class player of English billiards. In sport, she represents Scotland. Outside sport, she is a professional Web content producer and journalist at BBC News Online.
Ryan Day is a Welsh professional snooker player. He is a prolific break-builder, having compiled over 450 century breaks during his career, including four maximum breaks. He is a three-time World Championship quarter-finalist, has been ranked at no. 6 in the world and has won four ranking tournaments.
Alejandro Salvador "Alex" Pagulayan is a Filipino-born Canadian professional pool player. His nickname is "the Lion", given to him by the great Cliff Thorburn, former World Snooker champion. Pagulayan was born in Cabagan, Isabela, Philippines and was raised in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In 2012, Pagulayan became a citizen of Canada and now resides in Toronto.
Jimmy White's 2: Cueball is a snooker and pool video game developed by Awesome Developments and published by Virgin Interactive as a sequel to Jimmy White's 'Whirlwind' Snooker. It was originally released in 1999 for Windows and Dreamcast. A PlayStation version was released in 2000 in Europe and North America, with Bay Area Multimedia handling distribution for the latter territory. Archer Maclean, the designer of the original game, led the development team. The game includes mini-games connected with a pub setting. A Game Boy Color version of the game was released in 2000. A sequel to Cueball, called Jimmy White's Cueball World, was released in Europe for the PC in 2001. The game received mixed reviews from critics, with the PC and Dreamcast versions faring better than the PlayStation port.
Virtual Pool is a 3D, first-person sports simulation video game series with computer simulations of cue sports which was developed by Celeris. The games in the series simulate pool, snooker and carom billiards. The Virtual Pool series focuses on accurate simulation and improving the player's ability to play the sport in real life. Virtual Pool releases are sold with a money back guarantee to improve a player's external game.
Dark Energy Digital was a privately owned video game developer and publisher based in the United Kingdom. It was formed from members of Blade Interactive, which continues to operate as a separate company. On 28 September 2007, following the public announcement of Hydrophobia, it was announced that a deal had been made between Blade Interactive and Total Asset Limited and was to become a publisher in its own right and publish its own titles. On 19 March 2012, it was announced the company had closed due to low sales of Hydrophobia.
Christopher Melling is an English professional pool and snooker player from Keighley, Bradford, West Yorkshire. He is a former world number 1 at World Rules British Eight-Ball. He won the WEPF World Eightball Championship twice, in 2001 and 2003. He was ranked #1 in 2003 by the World Eightball Pool Federation. Melling has also twice won the International Pool Masters and the European Professional title (2002). He was the first player to win two International Tour events back to back. His entrance by walk-on music is from the song “Wannabe” by Spice Girls. Melling is also the only cue sports player to hold professional status in English 8 ball, American pool and snooker.
World Snooker Championship 2007 is a sports video game developed by Blade Interactive and published by Sega for PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
The World Snooker Championship (WSC) is a series of video games based on snooker featuring licensing from the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association. The first game in the series was released in 2001 and the last in 2011; a new licensed World Snooker game, Snooker 19, was released in 2019. The first four games were published by Codemasters and developed by Blade Interactive Software. Later games were published by Sega, Deep Silver and Koch Media.
Jimmy White's Cueball World is a sports simulation video game published by Virgin Interactive as the sequel to Jimmy White's 2: Cueball, itself a sequel to Jimmy White's 'Whirlwind' Snooker. The development team once again being led by Archer Maclean, who designed the other two Jimmy White titles. The game was released in December 2001 in Europe, with a North American release was planned to be released a year later by Titus Software under a budget range using the Virgin Interactive brand name. PlayStation 2 and Xbox versions were planned, but were later cancelled.
World Championship Snooker 2003 is a sports video game developed by Blade Interactive and published by Codemasters for PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Windows.
World Championship Snooker 2004 is a sports video game developed by Blade Interactive and published by Codemasters for Windows, PlayStation 2, and Xbox.
WSC Real 11: World Snooker Championship is a sports video game developed by Dark Energy Digital and published by Koch Media for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
