reacting to uk snooker

My problem with watching snooker for the first time was that the players made it look easy. I’d see a lovely shot and think, yes, I could do that. Absolutely. This is a terrible habit of mine when I watch people who are very good at something.

I had played pool before, but in my May 2025 snooker video, I didn’t really know what made the two games different. Mostly, I knew that “snooker” was a fun word to say. I ended up being fascinated by the skill, the very restrained arguments and the things that could interrupt an otherwise quiet match.

Looking calm is misleading

I began with a compilation of shots from the 2024 UK Championship. There were lots of red balls, rather than the stripes and solids I recognised from pool, and I quickly realised that my pool experience wasn’t going to explain everything happening on the table.

The players looked so calm. I liked that they dressed up, and I kept getting distracted by the referee, who I jokingly called the little butler guy. I was admiring the clothes in a compilation that was very clearly about the shots. Possibly not its intended audience.

Later, watching Judd Trump, I started noticing how much spin there was on the balls. That hadn’t registered with me earlier. The shots looked ridiculous, especially when he didn’t seem to spend very long lining them up, and I realised I wasn’t appreciating how difficult any of this actually was.

That was the contradiction. They could walk up, take the shot and make it look like nothing, while I was still trying to understand what I’d just watched. I didn’t leave with a sudden belief that I’d be good at snooker. I left thinking the people who were good at it were making their own skill very easy to underestimate.

“Get your eyes tested”

A compilation of players going too far had a rather different atmosphere from the rugby reactions I’d watched before. With rugby, going too far could mean a fight on the field. Here, I was watching disputes with referees about the position of a ball.

In one clip, the compilation described Ronnie O’Sullivan disagreeing over a touching-ball decision and telling the referee to get his eyes tested. I loved that insult. It felt so British to me, and it was a very different sort of confrontation from someone kicking off on a rugby pitch.

Ronnie appeared repeatedly, enough that I started wondering whether he was the bad boy of snooker. I didn’t know. The arguments seemed so reserved, which made the compilation’s dramatic promise funnier to me. Later clips included a player throwing a towel and somebody having a little temper tantrum, so perhaps I’d spoken too soon about how restrained everybody was.

I was still missing plenty of the vocabulary. An interview about a “banana” shot and a “cannon” sounded like another language, although I had at least worked out that the banana shot was the curving one. One bit understood, several more still to go.

I would immediately need to cough

The interruptions were another surprise. A fly on the table required attention, while an audience noise that commentators thought might be a whoopee cushion caused a much more serious reaction than I was expecting. I found it funny. The commentary did not.

I could also see myself being a disastrous spectator. If I had to sit silently, that’s exactly when I’d swallow my own spit wrong and get a coughing fit. I was imagining it rather than describing something that had happened, but the thought of trying not to make a sound made me anxious all by itself.

I finished having had a lot of fun, with plenty still unexplained. The skill impressed me, but I hadn’t expected the quiet room, the referee disagreements or a fly to keep my attention quite so much.

Watch my first snooker reaction, including the shots, disputes and interruptions.