While practicing my safeties, I got the idea that we could have a "safety snooker" game type, which would mainly consist of making safeties.

The main reason why this would be nice is that the current form of the games makes them mostly based on break building, therefore we have very few opportunities to have good safety exchanges.

I describe here my ideas about the possible rules of such a game. However, these would need 2 more things to be implemented in the game: snooker detection and balls replacing after a miss.


Safety snooker

Played only with the 6 colour balls, or possibly with 6 colours + 1 red, and on the original table. The goal is to make safeties and gather points for successful safeties.

Player A's turn happens as follow:
1. (balls are in state 1)
2. Player A tries to hit the best safety he can. He has 3 tries to make a regular safety shot. After the 2 first fouls the balls are respotted, after a 3rd foul the balls stay there. Potting the target ball is considered as a foul.
3. (balls are in state 2)
4. If player A managed to hit a regular shot in 2., player B tries to pot the target ball.
5. The balls are set back to "state 2"

At that point, roles are switched and the game continues.

The goal is to gather points faster than your opponent. There are 3 ways to gain points:
(1) step 2.: a successful safety, such that the target ball cannot, or can only partially be seen, makes you win points proportionately to the part of the target ball that can't be seen (maximum 10 points) (e.g. if your opponent can see half of the target ball, you win 5 points)
(2) step 2.: every miss makes your opponent win 4 points, 3 fouls in a row result in an additional 4 points
(3) step 4.: a successful pot makes you win 6 points

The game could be a race to 50 points.

The explanation of the ideas is the following:
(1) If you hit a good safety shot, you win points proportionately to the quality of your snooker
(2) If you hit a good safety shot, meaning that your opponent will hit hardly the target ball, you will win points for every miss (up to 3 times)
(3) If you hit a bad safety shot, meaning that your opponent can pot the target ball after your shot, you lose points (but in order to make the game move forwards, your opponent wins the points instead of you losing them)



Any thoughts?

sounds good... i aint very good at taking in information that i read so i dont really understand the rules 100% but i do understand the basic idea and think its a gudin

nice idea,would it happen?

Thats very well thought out. I see one problem - why only have it on the Original table? I understand thats the more realistic of the three, but isn't it viable to have this on the others?

Perhaps if you just wanted a quick game, Arcade would be better, due to the smaller table size.

surely it would be quicker on original lol.....more chance of missing the object ball than on arcade...?

Hmm. I guess I didn't understand the rules properly. I see your point. However, my argument still stands - if it can go on the Original table, it can go on Arcade and Regular as well?

How will the game know if it is a good safety or not? I think a score system like carom would be better. First to 5 1 point if you get the snooker and the opposite player fouls (misses the attempted escape)

I love the idea. Would love to have it implemented. But i can see a lot of problems with it to be honest.

I think it is much easier to miss a ball on original if you have to hit a cushion first. Also, it's harder to pot on original, which is good for these rules, because most points should be gained by safeties, not by potting.


That's described in the previous part:
The "explanation of the ideas" part is just a comment to the previous section, having the same numbering.

i dont understand that if this can be implemented and points awarded for the ball not being seen then why can we not have the free ball rule???

maybe i am just not reading properly but am just wondering.

(1) step 2.: a successful safety, such that the target ball cannot, or can only partially be seen, makes you win points proportionately to the part of the target ball that can't be seen (maximum 10 points) (e.g. if your opponent can see half of the target ball, you win 5 points)

thats true but it would be great if both of them could be implemented it would help snookers, high break and safties

How will the game know this though?

There are number of other issues related to the introduction of the free ball rule. The reason it has not been implemented is not that it's technically hard to implement, but more related to the gameplay. With the free ball rule, you should be able to nominate a colour. Also, the maximum break question has also been risen, because it would be easy hit higher breaks.

Well it's technically possible, it just requires some trigonometry. However I wrote at the top of my post, that this is one of the new things that would be needed to implement the game. So I'm well aware the game currently can't know it, but it could be implemented.

This is a great idea and yes the technical difficulties of implementation are not insignificant but are possible and worthwhile as the new functionality can then be incorporated into the normal game.

Another addition, I feel, that should be implemented is the Touching ball rule. This would limit the number of games that would descend into half an hour of 'Tippy Tappy' which I'm sure would also please those (in the normal game) who despise this sort of safety gameplay.

Of course, because of the limitations of the 2D implementation, excellent 'real life' safety shots (e.g. cue ball tight on the baulk cushion) are rarely very safe on FunkySnooker but first things first.

I like the sound of this. I would like to see it happening.

Nice idea Blutch, but I'd like to bring some balance to it though.

The other evening I played purely attacking regular - i.e. no safeties allowed. Then last night in the reg tourney I had a frame which went to the last 2 mins, purely because of the amount and quality of safety involved (no tapping into the pack).

Both variations were equally as enjoyable, and show that depending on how you and your opponent decide to play, it is quite fesaible to create a "safety snooker" atmosphere in a real game situation.

Re Dave's comments on "Tippy Tappy" - nothing stops a player running from the pack ... apart maybe from laziness, as it is considered somewhat easier to tap, rather than attempt a safety behind the lower colours.

Admittedly, lots of players here, especially arcade, do not have the patience (nor the desire) to play safe, but I can see several more important issues implemented before this should be: e.g. touching ball; miss; referee...(?) etc.

An example of where your idea may not work is if you have a colour over a pocket, and the only "visible" red is just in front. You would not want to risk potting the colour, so a safety (i.e from a snooker) would be more appropriate. How would you incorporate such scenarios?

To summarise (as you're all fed up with this post!) why not just play games in a safe manner (with friends, rather than unknowns)? Surely this is the best practise of all....?