Snooker. The Game That Invented Itself
This book is not a conventional history of snooker. It does not attempt to catalogue champions, record statistics, or trace the steady accumulation of titles and trophies. Instead, it asks a different question: how did a particular game come to exist at all? It developed gradually, through experiment, adaptation, misunderstanding, and chance encounters, shaped by material limitations, social needs, and individual responses to imbalance at the table.
The chapters that follow trace this process from its origins in India through its transitional forms, its spread across the Empire, and its gradual movement towards organised competition. Particular attention is paid to what changed, what remained, and why certain solutions endured while others faded.
The match between Roberts and Reece marks the end of this initial phase, not because it created modern snooker, but because it revealed that the game’s essential structure was already complete. What came later would refine and professionalise snooker, but the foundations had been laid. This book tells the story of how those foundations came to be built.