Savile Snooker
The rules of Savile snooker. As compiled by Stephen Potter. New edition, annotated, 2005
In 1968, the “Oldest Regular Player”, the author and BBC producer Stephen Potter, assembled, wrote down and annotated the “rules” of the variation on the game of snooker, a unique version of volunteer snooker, which had been played in the club since at least the 1900s.
“Savile” is an informal game, noisy, irreverent, and fun, played on the Club’s 1840s billiard table. There is always a cue and a welcome for new members. Older, more experienced, players expect to lose to the young until they, too, succumb to the conviviality and conversation, the latter seldom about the game, and swinging erratically from the erudition of a senior common room to the sort of commentary one might get from Smithfield bummarees should a fat man in a topper, tails, and patent leather shoes pick his way carefully across the market through a labyrinth of discarded tripe.
Stephen Potter is less remembered now for his innovative BBC radio programmes as for his seminal works “Gamesmanship” and “Oneupmanship”, both thought to be inspired by the billiard room and this game. Badly-authenticated reports have reached us that Robert Louis Stevenson took the game with him to Samoa, and Howard (Tutankhamun) Carter to Egypt: I introduced it to Kathmandu on the slightly warped small table in the British Embassy club, and was soundly beaten in three out of three frames by a distinguished Nepali poet, and two out of three by a man in the British Council, neither of whom had played before. Our standards are not high.
So, enjoy your game. We hope this little book will help restrain the wilder flights of interpretative fancy. After all, snooker is no mere pastime, but Officially a Sport. Isn’t it?
John Turtle
Chairman of Billiards
The full text of the rules can be downloaded in PDF format by clicking here:
The Rules of Savile Snooker. As compiled by Stephen Potter. New edition, annotated, 2005.