Snooker !!

Back home I got two best friends, both of them 'spoilt' to unimaginable extents. After our 12th, one of them went to Trichi and the other stayed back. So, during my 2nd year and 3rd year summers, I was introduced to Snooker to which this friend had got addicted to so much cause he was left alone. And let me warn ya, snooker is addictive, completely. We spent those summers in that smoke filled hall, chalking the cues, puffing away cigarettes and taking fine shots at the balls with infinite attention. We even went there after 2 beers on one afternoon!! It was awesome. Losers in academics attented that place regularly. Daily. Speaking vilest telugu ever known. So, this friend of mine was also a learner and used to talk to those bunch of losers to take fundaes and learn how to play good. Those guys were real good, i mean if there was any kinda competition in hyderabad and if these guys knew about it, atleast one would have bagged a prize. So, it was like, we used to spend the whole day, like some 7-8 hours at that place. Prices were real cheap, cause there was no demand and the regular costumers couldnt afford too much. Rs. 30/Hr. Effectively we were active on the tables for maximum 4-5 hours. And we took care not to spend more that 60 per day. heh. There was this thing called LTP -- Lose To Pay. When we both were amateur with snooker, we trapped novices into LTP pacts and made them pay.

Snooker is stunning. The game is simple. You have some red balls, each carrying one point and you have 6 different coloured balls each carrying points from 2 to 7, placed positionally. Aim is to complete all the red one's initially. Every pocketing of red ball follows a pocketing of any colored one. If the colored shot is successful, it is placed back to its position. or else it is left at its displaced position. When all the red balls are done with, you start pocketing the colored one's in ascending order of points without replacing them back. The main crux of the game is in the complication of choosing the balls. During the pocketing of red ones, you have to specifically say which ball you are gonna pocket along with the pocket you are aiming at. If, due to bad luck, the cue ball first hits an adjacent ball or if the chosen ball falls into a different pocket than you specified, you have a foul of -4.
After the completion of red balls stage, you dont even have a choice to choose the coloured ball because you follow the ascending order, however 'specifying the target pocket' rule still follows. This complication is taken advantage of after the completion of red balls. We called it snooking. When you know you cant pocket the coloured ball, you make sure that after you hit it, the cue ball and the coloured ball settle in such a position that the line of site between them is blocked by some other coloured ball, there by deliberately making the other player's turn a foul. :) HItting a not-to-be-first-hit colour weighs foul points equal to that colour point.
There were certain games in which, my opponent was more than 40 points ahead of me after all the red ones were done, and I was able to defeat him by snooking too many times :P.

I was addicted to the game. And when I was back after 3rd year summer, I was desperate to continue playing the game in mumbai. To my bad luck, I couldn't find one near to my college and I was forced to play at a table in Heeranandani a couple of times, with sky touching price of Rs. 150 per frame. A frame lasts for 20-40 mins :(.

I truly miss chalking the cue, concentrating and applying physics collision rules while taking aim, jumping after successfully pocketing a difficult one, those 90-degree-shots(a customized name given by me), rebounding a ball which was touching the side wall, Surfing ( when you are snooked with some other colored ball in the line of site, you surf the cue ball by making it take a curved path by spinning it and it IS extremely difficult ), those reverse spin and dead stop shots... and all the innumerable techniques which were learnt. :( .

And I know, I am gonna own a table as soon as I can barely afford it :D.