The Original Snooker
By V. Mordan “Archivist” and the team of
https://allaboutsnooker.info
With thanks to Dean Howell for proofreading the published text.
Rev. 10th January 2026
The full text of the article is available to download in PDF format at the following link:
The Original Snooker. By V. Mordan. Rev. 10th January 2026
Context, Creation, and Credibility
The origins of snooker have long been reduced to a single, almost folkloric, phrase: ‘a young British officer stationed in India in the 1870s added coloured balls to an obscure billiards game called Black Pool, thereby revolutionising it, transforming a commercial pastime into a competitive sport, elevating billiards almost to the level of chess.‘ Statements of this nature are often made by individuals lacking a commitment to factual accuracy, such as showmen or journalists, whose primary objective is to attract the attention of unsophisticated readers or viewers. Of course, there is a small element of truth in this statement, but it is just that, a small element. Reducing a complex process to a convenient anecdote with virtually no factual basis is not the appropriate approach to take in a matter such as historical research. In order to comprehend the reasons behind snooker’s emergence at that specific juncture and its success where numerous competitors failed, it is necessary not only to compile a timeline of known events, which, incidentally, are not numerous, but also to immerse oneself completely in that era, reconstruct the events that led to the creation of the new game, and understand and assess the psychological profile of its creator.
Snooker did not arise independently; it was not the inevitable result of the evolution of any of the commercial varieties of pool. Its emergence at a specific moment in time – the end of July 1875, the final weeks of the rainy season, in the officers’ mess of the 11th Foot Regiment in Jubbulpur, British India – was due to a number of seemingly unrelated events that ultimately led to a revolution in billiards. A comprehensive analysis encompassing the historical context, the players involved, and the environmental factors is essential to comprehending the genesis of snooker and substantiating its evolution.
Black Pool and Its Limitations
In the 1860s and early 1870s, the most popular commercial billiard games were variations of Life Pool and its derivatives, including Perpetual Pool, Everlasting Pool, Selling Pool, Blue Peter, and finally Black Pool, the universally recognised ancestor of Snooker. These games had a number of features in common: multiple cue balls, each belonging to one of the players, elimination through loss of ‘lives,’ and a strong gambling component. As Ian Hamilton, whose name is closely associated with that of snooker’s creator, Neville Chamberlain, wrote in his memoirs about that period: ‘<…> more money changed hands on the billiard table than on the card table.’ The rules varied significantly from club to club, and quite often a game known by one name in one region was called something completely different in another.
Black Pool itself was not a single, fixed game, but a family of related rule sets built upon Life Pool conventions. In essence, if a neutral black ball, that is to say, a ball not belonging to any of the players, was added to the Perpetual, Everlasting or Selling Pools, then in some clubs or regions the game was renamed Black Pool. In others, the game retained its original name even after the black ball was added. Contrary to modern misconceptions, Black Pool did not involve pyramids of red balls, nor did it resemble snooker in structure or strategy. It was a short-lived commercial pastime, popular for a few decades before falling into obscurity.
Jubbulpore, 1875. Material Reality
The billiard table at the Jubbulpore officers’ mess was not an ideal one. Like most regimental tables in India, it had been transported multiple times, subjected to heat, humidity, and inconsistent maintenance. Ivory balls, still the standard at the time, besides having problems with the centre of gravity, were particularly vulnerable to climatic conditions. Coloured balls faded rapidly; dyes peeled or discoloured; replacements were expensive and slow to obtain.
Billiard ball manufacturers did not sell them individually, and sets adapted to the climate were significantly more expensive. It was impractical for even officers of reasonably comfortable means to replace items constantly. Local workshops repainted balls using cheaper organic dyes, which produced irregular results and shortened the balls’ lifespan. By mid-1875, the set in use at Jubbulpore consisted of a set of balls that had been recently painted yellow and green, one or two brown ones, several discoloured balls, and some usable red balls left over after three had gone missing.
These constraints mattered. They limited what could be played, influenced which colours were available, and encouraged improvisation. The idea that snooker emerged fully formed, with its modern palette and layout, is incompatible with the material reality of colonial billiards.
Neville Chamberlain. Personality and Motivation
Neville Francis Fitzgerald Chamberlain was nineteen years old in 1875. Like many young officers of his class, he was athletic, competitive, sociable, and ambitious. Contemporary accounts and later biographical evidence describe him as creative, expressive, and eager to distinguish himself among his peers. He enjoyed risk, disliked losing, and possessed both artistic sensibility and organisational flair.
Importantly, Chamberlain was not a professional billiards player, nor was he attempting to create a sport in the modern sense. He was engaged in the same activity as his fellow officers: seeking diversion during the rainy season. However, his temperament and creative nature made him particularly sensitive to imbalance. When one of the invited artillery officers – an excellent player – dominated the table and casually referred to his opponents as ‘snookers,’ Chamberlain did not simply accept defeat. He responded by changing the game.
This reaction was characteristic of a young, driven lieutenant, whose heart was set on general’s stars and a renown that would rival his uncles’. Rather than attempting to match superior skill through practice alone, he altered the conditions under which skill operated. The goal was not to eliminate competition, but to level the playing field for all players at the start of the game.
Innovation Through Constraint
Chamberlain’s first step, as he later recalled, was the addition of another coloured ball to Black Pool. This was not an unprecedented development; balls had been added at an earlier stage. What mattered was what followed. The additional balls were assigned higher values, and, more significantly, their potting was ordered. Sequence replaced opportunity.
At the same time, a critical rule common to Life Pool and Black Pool was abandoned: the removal of obstructing balls. In previous games, if a direct shot was impeded, interfering balls could be lifted from the table. By prohibiting this practice, Chamberlain transformed obstruction from an inconvenience into a tactical feature. The phenomenon of being ‘snookered’ evolved into a standard aspect of the game, rather than an anomaly to be corrected.
The choice of colours was pragmatic. Yellow and green were inexpensive to repaint and widely available. Brown followed naturally. The substitution of a red ball for a discoloured neutral was both aesthetic and logical: red was already familiar, visible, and conventionally valued low. Its eventual role as the foundational scoring ball of snooker was not an accident, but a continuation of this early equivalence.
From Pastime to Structure
As the number of coloured balls increased, so too did the complexity of the game. Chamberlain imposed order. The sequence of shots became fixed. All players began on equal terms. The first object ball was no longer the other player’s cue ball, but the lowest-priced neutral ball – the red ball. This inversion marked the decisive break from Life Pool tradition.
The emerging game was neither Black Pool nor modern snooker, but something attractively new. It discouraged dominance through sheer potting ability and rewarded positional awareness, restraint, and planning. Most importantly, the game proved enjoyable.
Credibility and Memory
Chamberlain’s claim to have invented snooker was made publicly in 1938, more than sixty years after the events in question. Such retrospective accounts are often treated with suspicion, and understandably so. Memory can be subject to fading, details can become blurred, and personal significance can distort recollection.
However, a linguistic analysis of Chamberlain’s letter reveals a tone consistent with sincere personal memory rather than deliberate self-promotion. He acknowledged uncertainty where appropriate and did not exaggerate his role beyond what the evidence supports. While sincerity does not guarantee accuracy, the absence of implausible claims strengthens his credibility.
More significantly, independent reconstruction of the historical context demonstrates that Chamberlain’s account aligns closely with what could plausibly have occurred. The material conditions, the games available, the social dynamics and the psychological profile all point to the conclusion that snooker was not an accidental invention, but a deliberate response to a specific problem.
Why Snooker Endured
While numerous billiard games were invented in the nineteenth century, the majority have not survived to the present day. Who is familiar with Black Pool or Shell-Out, for example? The enduring popularity of snooker can be attributed to its capacity to address multiple challenges simultaneously. It balanced the abilities of players of different skill levels at the start of the game, transformed obstacles into opportunities for strategy, and maintained a balanced approach to aggression and caution. This adaptability led to the creation of numerous playable variations.
Snooker did not originate in public billiard halls or among professional players, but in officers’ mess, where it was shaped by the preferences and expectations of young players. It was a cure for boredom, an exciting game that did not allow masters to restrict newcomers’ access to the billiard table. It was not born fully formed, and its emergence was not inevitable. Snooker was created as a reaction by a young, ambitious officer to an external stimulus, conditioned by the context and limited by the real conditions of the moment. It is only by recognising all of the above that we can gain a more profound and nuanced understanding of the evolution of snooker and the significance of its various stages.
Practical Experiment and its Results
The young team at All About Snooker, comprising five players aged between 14 and 21, which is not significantly different from the reality of the company in which snooker was invented, conducted a practical experiment, trying to unravel the mystery of the transformation of Black Pool, a commercial gambling game common in the late nineteenth century, into chess on green cloth, as snooker is called today. A significant number of books and newspaper articles from that period were read. Neville Chamberlain’s psychological portrait has been scrutinised inside out. A great deal of time was spent at the snooker table in a high stance, practising the powerful shots that the young officers of the British Army were so proud of.
And they pulled it off! Of course, it took a considerable amount of time to process the results, find documentary evidence for each proposed step (special thanks to Peter Ainsworth, without whose help it would have been much more difficult to find the necessary information), and develop the stages of the experiment and the system for evaluating the actions taken. But it is all in the past now. Here is a link to download the article The Original Snooker, which contains a wealth of historical information and logical justification for each step of the reconstructed situation at the end of July 1875 in the 11th Foot officers’ mess, which led to the creation of the game that later evolved into the Snooker we all love: