Heads, Butts and Raging Pool Players

Pool twilight stories are not solely dominated by short-tempered hooligans with access to billiard balls and resevoir of single socks. Apparently, even the pros get the folly.

Recently, I ran into Malcolm Clarke’s post at The Journal Blog Central.
While discussing the serious issue of the pressure put on professional pool players backs, he had mentioned an incident in which a fellow pool player had “spent the night in hospital after headbutting the table during a match.”
According to Clarke, the clash between the pool player’s head and the table resulted of the loads of pressure the former had to deal with.
Well, I can only imagine the pressing life of a pool player. On the other hand, I can also visualize other professionals put under alot of pressure. For example, popular bloggers who have to satisfy the constant hunger of their devoted readers for more and more posts. Where will they bump their heads? In the fragile PC screen?

Finally, a quiz: which snooker player had headbutted a tournament official?

Snooker on Play89

Play89 has finally launched its new snooker software. The same as 8-ball and 9-ball, the snooker software can be free download from Play89 website, and then played for fun or for real money with players from all over the world. Play89 offers 4 types of snooker games: classic snooker with the entire set of snooker balls, mini snooker played with 3 red balls, 6-balls and 10-ball snooker.

Some words about snooker:

Snooker is the most popular billiard game in the UK and in Asia. Snooker was born, apparently, at the end of the 19th century in an English army base placed in India and it was developed from a billiard game called pyramid pool. The snooker game went through ups and downs, but the peak of its popularity in England is ascribed to the 1980s.

Snooker is played with 15 red balls and 6 balls of different colors: yellow, green, brown, blue, pink and black. Snooker balls are solid and slightly smaller than the standard pool balls. Each ball has a different point value; the player is scored the point value of the ball if it has been potted (=pocketed) legally. Additionally, a player is scored when the opponent fouls. The snooker game ends when all the balls have been potted. The winner of the game is the player who has scored the largest number of points.