It's in the game!

I guess there are all possible sorts of wasting one's time (and some impossible ones, too), just so many of them in fact, like there are people with no serious business of their own to concern themselves with. After all, everybody is being foolish in their own way, are they not?
So here is mine, you might call it: diversion, or a means to kill off whatever excess of time with nothing better to do calls for it. I've discovered that watching snooker on TV serves this purpose extremely well for me!

Now, how can it get any more boring than that, you may ask – and rightfully so. To clear things up, let me try to explain to you as best I can and short as seems appropriate, as to what charm exactly this “Billiard Royale” holds in store for the keen observer.

Why, odd as it may seem, boring as it may sound, it is literally all in there, the psychological implications, the suspense, the story(break)building, the abstraction, the professionalism, the drama; you can actually learn quite a lot from watching strategic minds unfold, at times, unravel under pressure. Snooker is a mind game, it is about strategy, will-power and concentration maintained over as much as three hours on stretch, when it comes to that.
It is also about precision, but not in so mathematical a sense as not to allow for a window of pure chance, opening up from time to time. It's like chess – only different!

Speaking of the well-mannered folks who professionally play the game, snooker appeals to me as a figurative, a playful exercise in civility, with a strict code of decorum and sportsmanship esteemed more highly than the sheer competition itself, and rigorously upheld even when it is most cruel. That certainly ennobles it a lot.

But there is one other thing that's even more interesting to me and that has all to do with those reds and colored balls themselves. To me this is somehow, strangely reminding of late 18^th century chemistry, where with pre-modern methods and half scientific, half doctrinaire methods of empirical wisdom the elements were deemed to “marry” each other off, and produce all kinds of miraculous, sometimes incalculable offspring.
OK, I admit that this may appear like some very, very far-fetched personal reverie of mine, and sure it is. But then again, try it out for yourselves, if you will, and see whether you can begin to read the game as I do, as a perfect and delicate abstraction of whatever plot you may fancy. Look at the ever singular arrangement of the balls on that table, the history of how that picture came about, of how we got to where we are at any given instant, the options how it may or may not further develop from here. And then the personal drama inside the players' minds that make them go for either the more aggressive or the defensive shot. To me this is at times just as enervating, as intriguing to watch as any drama you may think of. And it actually helps you to formulate your own story-lines if you happen to work in this field, for in almost every game you will definitely encounter patterns of a basic, an archetypical nature.

I shall leave it at that and simply resign myself to recommend giving it a try and watching the game to your pleasure! In case you are not familiar with the rules, simply go here and get a quick introductory course of it. Enjoy!

(pic©desideria.twoday.net)