Article by James Woolley
Power Snooker is the innovative new snooker competition that was supposed to sex up the game of snooker making it faster, less formal and basically more fun. I think that overall the first competition that took place this week fulfilled these objectives, but I’m still not convinced this is the future of snooker.
I have to admit I’m something of a traditionalist when it comes to snooker. I like the formal dress code, the silence of the watching crowd as the players get down to play a shot, and the format of the matches. So this latest tournament where matches lasted just 30 minutes, players were encouraged to dress down and talk into their microphone all the time, and the crowd were actively encouraged to be a little rowdy just didn’t really do it for me.
I’m all in favour of taking the game of snooker to a younger generation, but I don’t want snooker to become the chavvy sport that darts has become in recent years. Of course Barry Hearn is the man behind the PDC, so it was no surprise that this Power Snooker tournament was similar in many ways.
We had the walk-on music at the start, the beautiful girls, the rowdy crowd singing and chanting and seemingly getting more boisterous as time wore on. There was even a little bit of accidental swearing from Ronnie O’Sullivan, the eventual winner of the tournament.
Plus there were also a whole lot of new rules to learn, which even the referees seemed to struggle with at certain times. This was not helped by the fact that they now have to calculate double and quadruple points as balls are potted during certain points of the match.
There was also another flaw in the game because despite the fact that a match would be finished in 30 minutes, you can still have one-sided matches. A shorter format does not necessarily guarantee exciting matches.
So overall although it was something new and different, I don’t think Power Snooker will have grabbed the attention of the watching public. It definitely didn’t help that it was hidden away on ITV4 here in the UK.
I don’t see any reason why this tournament shouldn’t continue in the next few years, but I personally hope it remains as a one-off competition and doesn’t start to replace some of the mainstream tournaments in any way. I like the idea of shorter matches, like we saw in the World Open in September, but I think 30 minute matches are just too short.
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