Safety, snookers and escapes

Safety, snookers and escapes

Leave the white safe and get out of snookers legally.

What makes a good safety

When there is no pot you are confident of, play safe: leave your opponent with nothing to pot and a hard shot to play. The best safeties put distance between the white and the object balls, usually by sending the white back to the baulk cushion while the reds stay at the far end.

  • Leave the white close to a cushion. Your opponent then has to cue awkwardly off the rail.
  • Leave no red near a pocket, with no clear line from the white.
  • Hit the object ball thinly, so it barely moves and the white keeps most of its pace.
A thin safety: the white just clips the red, which hardly moves, then comes off the top cushion and returns to baulk.

Snookers

You are snookered when another ball blocks the straight path from the white to both sides of the ball you are on. Laying a snooker on purpose, often by rolling the white behind a baulk colour, forces your opponent to play off cushions, and a miss gives you foul points. Late in a frame, snookers are how a player who is behind wins points back.

Escaping off a cushion

To escape, find the point on a cushion that bounces the white onto the object ball. Without spin, the white comes off a cushion at roughly the angle it went in. So aim at the mirror image of the object ball: as far beyond the cushion as the ball is in front of it. Measure to the line the ball's centre travels on, a ball's radius in from the cushion.

Pace changes the angle. A firm shot comes off a little narrower and a slow one a little wider, so play escapes at a medium, controlled pace.

If you fail to hit the ball on and the referee judges that you did not make a good enough attempt, they can call a miss and have you play the shot again. Always try a genuine escape.

Snookered behind the brown: aiming at the red's mirror image beyond the side cushion brings the white round to hit it.

Watch next

  1. 1BS #44 Breaking Off – Practice for successSnooker(opens on YouTube)
  2. 2BS #22 Safety – Practice ExercisesSnooker(opens on YouTube)
  3. 3BS #25 Rolling up to the ballSnooker(opens on YouTube)
  4. 4BS #26 Snooker Escapes – Angles and SlideSnooker(opens on YouTube)
  5. 5The EASY Way To Escape The Most CHALLENGING SnookersSnooker(opens on YouTube)

At the table

Play 10 break-offs and judge where the white finishes. Then set up 5 snookers behind the brown and escape each one off one cushion.

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