Snooker is facing a financial crisis after two of its largest financial supporters have announced withdraw. 888.com, the gaming company and the major sponsor of the World Snooker Championship, the most important event of the sport, has cut off its 5 years sponsorship contract after 3 years and at the same time, Saga Insurance, had quit supporting the Wembley Masters. The fiscal damage to snooker is estimated in £1.5 million. It is the second serious financial crisis faced by snooker due to lack of sponsors that followed the 2005 tobacco sponsorship ban. 

Here’s a reminder from snooker better days, when snooker players used to smoke and drink anything but water during championships:

The Crucible Theater in Sheffield, which serves as the World Championship snooker castle for over 3 decades is currently going through renovation. Therefore, pieces of the famous foyer carpet are offered for sale. Snooker fans who would like to literally worship the carpet on which snooker champs stepped on since 1987, will be asked to pay £50 for a carpet square sized 18X18 inch and £75 for a 27X35 inch piece of history. The incomes from the carpet sales will be donated to the next stage campaign, purposed to renovate the Sheffield Theaters.

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).

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)?

The spot put on 4 Chinese snooker players on the last World Championship illuminates the uncommonness of the presence of non-British players at the sports’ most significant event. Seriously, over the last 30 years most of the World Snooker Championship emerged of the British Isles. So, who is to blame? The governing body’s poor global promoting efforts? The United Kingdom’s pride in its snooker heroes? Or is it the weather? 

"Calling the championships at the Crucible the World Championships is a joke considering only about six countries are represented in the top 50 of the World rankings. It’s like America calling their baseball final the World Series." 

Says a snooker fan nicknamed Foliage at the BBC’s comments page, and suggests a conspiracy theory according to which the (UK based) snooker authorities who are afraid to lose the country’s dominance on the game’s talents are making zero efforts to promote snooker abroad.

One of the commenters suggested something else:

"You do need to look at climate to see why more players come from cold wet countries. Scotland is not renown for it’s tropical sunny temperatures, so when the likes of Hendry and Higgins wanted to kill some time they went indoors to the snooker room. In Brazil you go out and kick a ball round." 

In other words, blame the English rain.

Liu Chang was awarded a wildcard entry throughout the 2008-9 snooker season. This award guarantees that you’ll continue to hear about the young Chinese snooker player and his deeds during the next major snooker events. Chang, who had just turned 18, is the fourth player in the history of the game who made it to the World Championship at the infant age of 17. Chang was defeated by Ronnie O’sullivan, another member of the prestigious quartet, on the first round at the Crucible, yet his achievements were impressive enough to award him a wildcard entry. Liu Chang is then the fifth Chinese player to join the next international snooker season and to strengthen the Chinese snooker dominance. 

In the meantime, Ronnie O’sullivan has been penalized for his China Open misbehavior. The 3rd time World Snooker Champion is required to forfeit his prize money (£2,750) and pay another £1,000 fine. In addition, The Rocket is being punished with a loss of 700 ranking points. Nevertheless, these 700 points do not send him away from the top.

Two snooker news items from the last few days caught my attention to the fact that snooker is growing bigger in East Asia. Maybe not as popular as in the domains of the United Kingdom, yet much more popular than in the States or Continental Europe. And since the English people adore sports betting almost as much as they adore snooker, you can by now put your money on the next World Championship that will be taken by a Chinese player.   

On the same topic, the first snooker news item was about Chinese snooker player Ding Junhui, who was chosen to carry the Olympic torch to its last stop, Huangshan city in Anhui. Starting at the foot of East Hill in Jixi County, Ding’s journey opened the last day of the 4.4 km march. At the same opportunity, Ding, one of the most admired sports people in China, expressed his wishes that snooker will be recognized as an Olympic sport. 

The second item, mentions the growing interest the snooker game in the Kashmir Valley, especially by teenagers. Kashmiri youth new craze is warmly accepted even by their parents for two reasons. First, they’d rather them concentrating on playing snooker correctly then getting involved in the troubles that reckless teenagers usually get into, mainly since the game has a soothing effect on its players. Secondly, the scene of youngsters playing snooker in local clubs marks the return of more peaceful times.

Snooker players are not the only ones having problems with their organizations. Across the Atlantic, American pool players deal with delay of payments, sponsorship shortage, sudden changes in ranking systems and other kinds of messes. Therefore, Mark Griffin, the CEO of the BCA Pool League, plans to take charge on the future of the professional sportsmen in the country. 

In his efforts to improve things for American pro pool players, Griffin promises to launch a new billiard tournament with more than $200,000 in added prize money, and to offer a stable, long lasting financial support for pro players to replace their dependency on temporary sponsorship, and might even include a health insurance. To make it possible, the pro pool players in America will have to kick off a new association. 

Griffin’s thinking out loud come in a very good timing, not long after the United States Professional Pool Players Association stand making against the World Pool-Billiard Association, the international parent organization of the BCA. In putting the initiation of a new pool players organization a condition for the implementation of his promising plans, Griffin answers the UPA arguments. About the same time, some leading snooker players have attacked, anonymously the World Snooker Association, arguing the organization fails in promoting the sports to the same level as golf or other sports.

More on the subject:

The quarrel between the two Philippine governing bodies puts the 10-ball and 9-ball world championships in risk.

Not winning his first World Snooker Championship, didn’t break Ali Carter’s spirit, since only a couple of weeks later the chap had triumphed the 2008 Huangshan Cup Snooker All-star Game. Carter faced Hong Kong snooker phenomena Marco Fu, whom despite his amazing 139 break that followed a tight 3-3 score, had lost the final matches, setting the score on 5-3, and handing the title to 2008 World Snooker runner-up. 

Meanwhile, Chinese snooker superstar Ding Junhui, who made it to the third place at the Huangshan Cup, had announced its intentions to donate his entire winning bonus (150,000 yuan which equivalents to about 20,000 U.S. dollars) to the Sichuan Province earthquake victims.