I used to be a pretty serious pool player ( when you grew up with Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason in your head in The Hustler in a pretty continuous loop that happened. Fortunately, I went to college with a lot of rich kids who had tables in their basement and could beat their coursins so they thought they could play <g> )

I'd go up to Canada in the summer and get my clock cleaned pretty regularly on snooker tables (which looked to me the size of footbal fields <s>) by the local boys, who had similar experiences when they came south and played our version of pocket billiards. Very different game - the size of the balls is probably the biggest adjustment.

I've never seen a snooker table in the US though I've been told there's a place in Boston that has a pretty nice setup.

Of course, I can't stand playing 8 ball or on tables you put coins in either. 9 ball and straight pool are the only games I can take seriously. And I really prefer to play in places where my Balabushka isn't the only one in the house. <s>

>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