The Royal London Watches Grand Prix, one of the top ranking snooker tournaments, will be located at the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre in Glasgow instead of its original planned location in Aberdeen. The tournament dates – October 11-19, 2008 – have not been changed.

The 25th annual Scottish Grand Prix, supported by the Royal London Watches, will feature the world’s top ranked snooker players such as the 2008 World Snooker Champion Ronnie O’sullivan, last year’s Grand Prix champion Marco Fu, Stephen Hendry, John Higgins, and Glasgow’s local snooker hero - Stephen Maguire (number 2 in the 2008-9 official ranking list).

The upcoming WPA (World Pool-Billiard Association) tournaments, the World 9-ball and 10-ball Championships might be detrimental effected due to the quarrel between the two Philippine governing bodies the Billiards and Snooker Congress of the Philippines (BSCP) and the Billiards Managers and Players of the Philippines (BMPAP). The BMPAP is currently threatening to ban the 10-ball event and hold an alternative one at the same time, which would attract the local Philippine billiard players, drive away major sponsors and eventually lead to the cancellation of the planned WPA tourney. 

The fear of holding these two prestigious pool world championships without today’s leading pool players Filipinos Efren Reyes, Francisco Bustamante and Ronnie Alcano (to name but a few), that made Ian Anderson, the WPA president to call out the two quarreling bodies and beg them to settle the differences between them, and to make it possible for the 9-ball and 10-ball world championships to take place according to plans, of course, with the presence of the top players in these games. Cancellations or any other damage to the planned events, would eventually harm the image of the sports itself, Anderson declared righteously.

Joe Auty of West Ardsley, England, had celebrated his 100th birthday last month, so the Morely Observer reports. Although he had left the green baize of snooker in favor of the green lawn of Crown Green Bowling, he says he won’t be getting this far without making sportive activities (as well as a healthy diet and good genes) an integral part of his life.

Joe Auty was born in 1908 and spent most of his first 100 years in Church Lane, West Ardsley. He worked as skilled tool maker at the Beacon Works for 50 years and always was, and still is, member of sports club.

It all started out at a Cricket game where Hanging Heaton played against West Indies. A random ball that flew into Mr. Auty’s direction made him decide to start playing the game and soon after forming a cricket club at Woodkirk.

Mr. Auty’s next chosen sport game was snooker (not surprising if you remember that chapter in billiard history saying that the game was an indoor version of the cricket game), and then tennis, along with his Mrs. For a period of 29 years Joe Auty hasn’t touched a snooker cue, but fight after retiring from Beacon Works, he felt that itch that sent him straight to the closest snooker club. The reunion with the cue was so exciting that no one could believe it has been almost 30 years since the couple has last met. And from there, Mr. Auty was tempted to replace snooker with Crown Green Bowling (an outdoor variation of bowling), joined the local league and stayed there for the next 35 years (at least).

* Well, not really, but it is a pool/snooker blog.

The World Snooker Association, the leading governing body of the sports, had released an official statement cleaning up a snooker player named Matthew Selt from bribe suspicion. According to the statement, Selt underwent a disciplinary hearing last April, clarifying the rumors over his alleged bribe offering to his opponent at the Pontins International Open Series. 

To read this story between the lines, you should visit the snooker scene blog, that’s where I first learned about this story. In short, it started out in a blog post, wondering about the Association’s no comment policy over a rumor saying that a snooker player was found guilty of offering to a fellow player to lose at a match for £1,000 and was fined £2,000 at the governing body’s disciplinary hearing. A day after the post went online, World Snooker had released the above statement in their official website. And Dave H of the Snooker Scene blog was left with another question: if this rumor was untrue, why did they refuse to deny it in the first place? 

And while we are on the subject, how come snooker is the only sport where a player can bet on his games (providing he is not putting money on his losing)?