What Are the Points for Snooker?

Snooker is a two-player sport played on a 12- by 6-foot table. There are six pockets around the table where the player aims to "pot" colored balls by knocking them in with the white cue ball, which is struck with a wooden cue. The balls are worth a different number of points depending on color, and the player who scores the most points wins the round, or "frame." There can be up to 35 frames in a game of snooker.

Red Balls

There are 15 red balls on the snooker table, and each is worth one point. However you can only take a shot at another colored ball by first potting a red, so although they are not high-scoring balls they are crucial to winning the game. The reds start the game arranged in a triangle at the far end of the table, and the game starts when a player breaks this "pack" apart.

Colored Balls

Aside from the reds, there are six colored balls on the table, each a different color and worth a different number of points. The yellow, green and brown balls start the game at the top of the table and are worth two, three and four points respectively. The blue ball sits right in the middle of the table and is worth five points. The pink sits just in front of the pack of reds and is worth six points, while the black sits behind them and is worth seven.

Runs of Points

When you pot a red ball, it stays potted. If a color is potted before all of the reds are gone, the player gets the points but the colored ball is put back on the spot where it started the game. Once the reds are gone, you need to pot the colors in order of points. You put together runs of points by potting a red and leaving the cue ball in a good spot to pot a color. Then you pot the color while putting the cue ball in a good place to score another red, and so on.

The Black Ball

The black is the highest scoring ball in snooker, worth seven points. A lot of the strategy in snooker is in managing to pot red balls while setting up an angle to then pot the black. The only way to score maximum points in a frame is to pot all 15 reds followed every time by the black and then clear up all six remaining balls without missing once. This adds to 147 points, but it rarely happens -- if a player scores a 147 in the World Championships, he wins 147,000.

Fouls

If you commit a foul in snooker, it awards four points to your opponent. Potting the white ball, hitting a color without first potting a red, failing to hit anything with the cue ball and hitting balls off the table are all fouls that would award your opponent four points. A player who needs to make up points to catch his opponent can try to hide the cue ball behind colored balls, so that his opponent is likely to miss the reds and foul. This is known as a "snooker."