The object of a frame is to score more points than your opponent by potting balls in a fixed order. Reds are worth one point each and stay down once potted; the six colours are worth two to seven and are returned to their spots until the last red has gone. A player keeps the table for as long as they keep potting the correct ball, so the game is less about single shots than about sequences — the break — and the ability to leave the cue ball in the right place for the next one.
The rules are maintained by the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association, whose modern code descends from the standardisation carried out by the Billiards Association and Control Council in 1919. One referee controls the table, cleans and respots balls, calls the score aloud and adjudicates fouls; there is no video review of shots, though referees may consult a match official on rare disputes. Etiquette carries unusual weight: players routinely acknowledge their own fouls, apologise for flukes, and concede frames that are mathematically still alive but practically gone.
Scoring at a glance
Core rules
The table, the balls and the cue
A full-size snooker table measures twelve feet by six, with a playing surface of 3,569 by 1,778 millimetres laid on slate and covered in napped baize. Six pockets sit at the corners and the middles of the long cushions, cut to a template only a few millimetres wider than a ball. Twenty-two balls of 52.5 millimetres are used: a white cue ball, fifteen reds and six colours. A cue must be at least three feet long. Because the table is so large relative to its pockets, a straight pot the length of the table is among the hardest routine shots in sport.
How a frame starts
The fifteen reds are racked in a triangle immediately behind the pink, and the colours are placed on marked spots: yellow, green and brown on the baulk line, blue on the centre spot, pink on the pyramid spot, and black 324 millimetres from the top cushion. The striker breaks off with the cue ball in hand from inside the D and must contact a red. Almost no professional tries to score from the break: the standard shot clips the corner of the pack thinly and returns the cue ball to safety on the baulk cushion, leaving the opponent nothing.
Red, colour, red, colour
While reds remain on the table the ball on alternates. The striker must pot a red first, scoring one point, and reds stay down once potted. That earns the right to nominate any colour; potting the nominated colour scores its value and the colour is immediately returned to its own spot by the referee. The striker then needs another red. A visit ends the moment a player misses the ball on or commits a foul. Because the black is worth seven, high break-building means taking red after red while keeping the cue ball on the black side of the pack.
Clearing the colours
Once the final red and the colour that follows it have been potted, the six colours must be taken in ascending order of value: yellow, green, brown, blue, pink, black. From this point a potted colour stays down instead of being respotted, so the table empties as the sequence runs. If the scores are level after the black has been potted or fouled, the black is respotted, the cue ball goes back in hand from the D, and the frame becomes sudden death decided by the next score or foul.
Breaks and the 147
A break is simply the number of points scored in one visit to the table. The maximum available in normal play is 147 — fifteen reds each followed by the black for 120, then yellow through black in order for another 27. A century break of 100 or more is the professional benchmark of a good visit, and the leading players now record more than a hundred centuries across a single season. Totals above 147 are possible only when a free ball is in play, which is why a 155 exists as a theoretical curiosity rather than a realistic target.
Snookers and the free ball
A player is snookered when no part of any ball on can be struck in a direct straight line from the cue ball because another ball blocks the path. Laying a snooker is the sport's primary defensive weapon: the opponent must escape off one or more cushions, and failing to make contact with a legal ball concedes points and often the position. If a foul leaves the incoming player snookered, the referee awards a free ball, and the striker may nominate any ball on the table to act as the ball on for that shot, scoring it at the value of the real ball on.
Fouls and the four-point floor
Every foul awards points to the opponent, and the penalty is never fewer than four. The value is the higher of the ball on and any ball wrongly struck, potted or disturbed, so a foul involving the pink costs six and one involving the black costs seven. After a foul the incoming player may play from where the balls lie or ask the offender to play again from the same position — the standard choice when the offender has left themselves in serious trouble and would otherwise be rescued by handing the table over.
Match structure and conceding
Matches are decided over an odd number of frames, from best of seven in early ranking rounds to best of 35 in the World Championship final, played across four sessions on two days. Players alternate the break-off from frame to frame and take a mid-session interval. Concession is part of the code: when a player needs snookers and the frame is realistically gone, the convention is to shake hands and move on, and refusing to concede a hopeless frame is treated as gamesmanship rather than determination.
Fouls & penalties
Failing to hit the ball on
The most common foul in professional snooker is missing the escape from a snooker. If the cue ball fails to make first contact with a ball that is on, the striker concedes at least four points and the opponent chooses whether to play from where the balls now lie or to hand the shot straight back. Because a failed escape usually leaves the cue ball somewhere useless, the points are often the smaller part of the damage.
Potting the cue ball or the wrong ball
Sending the cue ball into a pocket — an in-off — is a foul worth at least four points, and any ball potted on the same stroke does not count. Potting a ball that is not on carries the same penalty structure, valued at the higher of the ball on and the ball potted, and the offending ball is respotted unless it is a red, in which case it stays down and is simply lost to the scoreboard.
The miss rule
If the referee judges that a player failed to hit the ball on and did not make their best possible attempt, a miss is called in addition to the foul. The opponent may then have the balls replaced exactly as they were and ask for the shot again. Where the striker was not snookered and a direct path to the ball on existed, a warning follows the second miss and a third loses the frame outright.
Touching ball, push shot and double hit
The cue tip may strike the cue ball once and once only. A push shot, where tip, cue ball and object ball are in contact simultaneously, is a foul, as is any double hit and any stroke played before the balls have come to rest. Disturbing a ball with the cue, the rest, a sleeve or a hand is also a foul. When the cue ball is already touching a ball on, the striker must play away without moving it.
Jump shots, stance and equipment
Deliberately jumping the cue ball over any part of another ball is a foul in snooker, unlike in pool, which is why escapes must be found off the cushions. A player must keep at least one foot touching the floor throughout the stroke, must not play with the wrong end of the cue, and must not use anything other than approved rests. Balls forced off the table are respotted where possible, with a foul charged at the usual value.
Match format
A frame ends when all balls have been potted or a player concedes, and matches are won by taking a fixed number of frames. Ranking events typically run best of seven or nine in early rounds and build toward best of eleven or thirteen finals; the World Championship escalates from best of nineteen in the first round to best of 35 in the final, an event that lasts two days and can run past midnight. Long formats are deliberate: they suppress luck and reward the player who can rebuild after a bad session.
Play is divided into sessions of roughly two and a half to three hours with a fifteen-minute mid-session interval, and there is no shot clock in standard competition. Variant formats exist for television: the Snooker Shoot Out is a single frame with a shot clock and a ten-minute limit, six-red snooker shortens the frame by removing nine reds, and several invitational events use a running clock. None has displaced the classic format at the top of the sport, where the four-session world final remains the defining test.
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