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I suppose I don't really "qualify" as a "newbie", having been - to my surprise - on this forum for nearly 7 years, but here's a bit of "snooker" biography:
I first became aware of the existence of snooker at the end of the 1960s due to the famous BBC engineer who discovered that snooker tables could be shown to advantage on TV, which developed into Pot Black.
I played a bit with fellow students while at university in the early 1970s, then completely forgot about snooker until 2005, by which time I'd been living in Germany for 30 years and suddenly rediscovered it on Eurosport, first of all seeing Shaun Murphy winning the WC. Previously I had not heard of one single major player of that era - the big and small names were completely new to me.
Have followed developments more or less regularly since then, enjoy watching a few frames of televised tournaments but never become too glued to the TV unless a really exciting match is developing. I'd like to start playing again, but don't really have any meaningful opportunity.
I dislike the BO7 format, because a player can very easily lose a match if for example he gets off to a lousy start and finds himself 2 frames and 50 points down, whereas he has a somewhat better chance of recovering with proper formats like BO9 and BO11 - besides which it leads to too many freak results and players reaching the quarter-finals or even semis when they don't really belong there. I also feel that there are too many tournaments with too much BO7 stuff played nowadays - previously there were too few tournaments on the calendar, but now the pendulum really has swung too far in the opposite direction, which has led to a certain amount of overkill.
I first became aware of the existence of snooker at the end of the 1960s due to the famous BBC engineer who discovered that snooker tables could be shown to advantage on TV, which developed into Pot Black.
I played a bit with fellow students while at university in the early 1970s, then completely forgot about snooker until 2005, by which time I'd been living in Germany for 30 years and suddenly rediscovered it on Eurosport, first of all seeing Shaun Murphy winning the WC. Previously I had not heard of one single major player of that era - the big and small names were completely new to me.
Have followed developments more or less regularly since then, enjoy watching a few frames of televised tournaments but never become too glued to the TV unless a really exciting match is developing. I'd like to start playing again, but don't really have any meaningful opportunity.
I dislike the BO7 format, because a player can very easily lose a match if for example he gets off to a lousy start and finds himself 2 frames and 50 points down, whereas he has a somewhat better chance of recovering with proper formats like BO9 and BO11 - besides which it leads to too many freak results and players reaching the quarter-finals or even semis when they don't really belong there. I also feel that there are too many tournaments with too much BO7 stuff played nowadays - previously there were too few tournaments on the calendar, but now the pendulum really has swung too far in the opposite direction, which has led to a certain amount of overkill.
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