>Didn't know whether to put this in sport or not. Over here we've just had, again, another world championship in snooker. Now this "sport" strikes me a little like baseball, in that we have a world championship but, afaik, only one contestant was from outside the British Isles, and that was Honk Kong, an ex-Brit colony. The only other guy I can conjur to mind is Cliff Thorburn, and ex-contestant from Canada.
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>Is it that Snooker is only practised in British Commonwealth lands? I've never seen any evidence of it in the USA or Europe. Incidentally, the guy who just lost the final has twice been world champ at 8-ball pool

We play both here. Snooker is probably prevalent (unless things have changed drastically since my misspent youth). I think in the U.S. it's mostly 8 ball and other forms of pocket pool played on a small table with huge pockets.

That's not to take anything away from pool players. They are very good at what they do, but snooker is a whole different animal (and imho, a much more difficult game).

BTW, Thorburn was more than an ex-contestant. He was world champion back around the early 80s (too lazy to look it up). IIRC he was also the first person ever to run a 147 break in a world championship game - also in the 80s sometime.