Power Snooker: Success or Failure ?

Ultimate_snooker wrote:power play for the rest of the frame seems a good idea, encorage players to get to that fairly quickly

Sonny wrote:It's fairly obvious that wild doesn't "get it" therefore take any of his suggestions for improvements with a pinch of salt.

Ultimate_snooker wrote:

Sonny wrote:http://www.snookerisland.com/blog/power-snooker-computer-game-snooker/

very good and balanced write up there sonny...Top marks

wildLOVESWAGNER wrote:i have now read your blog out of interest the same way i read matthew syed article this morning.

i cant agree with hardly anything you said or matthew said because i did not watch it after 30 minutes so the rowdiness of the crowd was never really witnessed by me.

as for being threatened by it maybe a tad before watching it but after 5 minutes the thought of it threatening the real game totally vanished and all i felt was ok a interesting concept but then it became repetitive same old same old a bit like darts throw after throw = chance after chance and after 30 minutes i had seen enough but out of interest i watched a bit of selby v carter but it was the same frame with different players so at that point i switched it off.

regarding the rules it needs refining if it has any hope

ball in hand = good idea

power ball= good idea however not under time limit (once you pot the power ball then power play for the entire frame) 2 many clocks involved in different things shot clock, frame time clock then power play clock that did my head in.

power zone = scrap it totally useless

the rules overall was badly thought through and everything had emphasis on bloody clocks.

i will never like it as i say its to repetitive and boring for me but i cant and never understand why people thought the rules was ok because they was not.

Bourne wrote:I haven't read it but Hendon said his rant compared the tournament to something on the Loose Women level of class, which I thought was funny

POWER GAME PROVES FOUL AND MISS

The Decision to nudge the sport towards the 'lads' mag market is sad and grubby move,writes Matthew Syed

IF you took a malevolent impresario — the entertaiment of Descartes's evil genius — and asked him to come up with the crassest, cheapest, tackiest and most godforsakenly awful sporting event in history. If you incentivised him with a wad of cash for every toe that duly curled. If you offered a bonus for making it as ghastly for the live punter as the television viewer. If you gave him a large cheque for every mouth that whimpered "no more, please".
Even then, he (I am assuming that evil geniuses are invariably masculine) would be hard pressed to have come up with anything so fiendishly and consist­ently awful as Power Snooker.
To enter the IndigO2 Arena in the O2 in London on Saturday was to enter a kind of sporting purgatory, a glimpse of what sport would look like if handed over to the producers of The Jerry Springer Show.
The problem was not the format. The Power Snooker rules, with nine reds, a power zone and matches played over the course of 30 minutes, were only partially awful. The players slowly got their heads around the tactical chal­lenges and there were decent passages of play, albeit overshadowed by the glaring fact that a player in the lead after 15 minutes could while away the rest of the contest by playing safe
No, the problem was not the product but the packaging It was the self-
conscious attempt by the promoters
(two individuals with a background in
the entertainment business) to 'add
sparkle", "inject a little glamour" and
"bring snooker into the modem
The modern age? Well. yes. if moder­nity is defined by what passes for an editorial in Nuts magazine.
The slow-motion car crash com­menced in the opening few minutes

when Matt Smith — usually a compe­tent broadcaster — announced that the coveted trophy would be brought to the stage by the Power Girls, three models who duly walked out carrying what looked like a plastic darts board. Danni, Hollie and Peta will give you something to look at," Smith felt moved to tell us. Whether that was in the script or it was simply a case of Smith getting caught up in the lad-mag shtick was not entirely clear.
9 Either way, Smith and his co-presenter then encouraged the audi­ence to "get involved" and to "let the beers flow", with the entirely predicta­ble consequence that by the evening session a sozzled cohort were sending a steady flow of obscenities down from the balcony as the rest of the audience cringed with embarrassment Shaun Murphy, a little on the rotund side, had to put up with "you fat b******" and "keep your chin up, son". Ding Junhui endured various taunts bordering on the racist that I don't feel like repeating. Michaela Tabb, the refe­ree, was the subject of various sexual in-nuendos that left the highly respected referee squirming with embarrassment. Patricia Murphy, the other referee, who happens to be not quite as glamorous as Tabb, was informed: "We want Michaela, we want Michaela".Even more crudely, the players were so often incited by sections of the crowd to "pot the brown" that Ali Carter was actually asked about it in a post-match interview by the increasingly hapless Smith. It was at that point that you wondered if Power Snooker was, in fact, not a sporting event but a post-modern film set put together by the people who brought you American Pie.It is difficult to know whether the pro­moters are saddened or pleased that they managed to transport snooker back to the football terraces of the 1970s, but they can hardly be surprised. The crowd had been invited to drink a lot of beer and to make a lot of noise, and a minority had done so with gusto.Of course, football players can run around the pitch when under fire from the crowd, but snooker players have no­where to hide. They often have to sit for minutes at a time with nothing to do except sip water, so it is not terribly easy to sustain composure while being chided. Murphy, a decent cove, squirmed so uncomfortably that I began to feel sorry for him—but not as sorry as for the spectator beside me who had brought his young son.
Barry Hearn, the chairman of World Snooker, sanctioned the Power Snook­er event on the basis that it offered the chance of bringing a new audience to sport, thus boosting the events owned and run by his organisation. Quite what he made of it is as yet unknown, but it is understood he thinks the jury is still out.
I have news for him. This was shame­less, tasteless and undigested drivel of a kind that makes Loose Women look classy. Expect it to catch on.

Sonny wrote:It's interesting to hear what was going on out of earshot from watching on tv. He was obviously influenced by what he heard from the crowd and based his opinion on that and not what it would be like with a different audience.

Sonny wrote:Absolutely no chance whatsoever of a ranking event, that's just silly talk.