Cueball Referees

A conundrum has been raised by incidents in VBSA Pennant matches played recently. This account of proceedings in the first incident is not first-hand but from the perspective of the player who did not prevail in that particular frame. The course of events was that this player, who was 30 points in arrears with one red remaining managed to lay a snooker. The referee upon the failure of his opponent to successfully escape from the position, called a ‘miss’ but then turned to th

Twice in recent matches at the Welsh Open Snooker tournament Ronnie O’Sullivan has chosen to end a frame in his favour by striking at a red before the referee had had a chance to spot the colour previously potted and whilst leading the frame such that there was no possibility of his opponent getting back into it. This happened both times with Ronnie at the end of breaks totalling in the 90s and begs the question of why would he do such a thing and what, if any, are or should

As can be seen in this diagram the red ball not in shadow is fully snookered behind the blue ball with approximately the same distance from the cue ball to the blue as from the blue to the red. Both the cue ball and the ball on are in open areas of the table with the cue ball in a position that would not cause awkward cueing in any escape attempt. With the width of a ball being 52.5 mm I will refer to this as one unit. The rule book states that to avoid a call of ‘foul’, a ba