Illustration of the three-ball bag billiards game in1early 9th century, Tubingen, Germany.

It is generally believed that snooker originated in the second half of the 9th century. [5] Billiards is a popular activity among British officers stationed in India, and people have invented variants of more traditional billiards games. During the period of 1874[6] or 1875[5], a change in the design of the officers' canteen in Jabalpur was to add colored balls in addition to red and black for the pyramid pool and the life pool. [7] The word snooker also comes from the military, which is a slang term referring to a first-year military school student or an inexperienced person. [5] One version of the incident is that Colonel Sir neville chamberlain of Devon Regiment was playing this new game when his opponent failed to hit the ball into the bag, and Chamberlain called him a snooker. [7] In this way, it has formed an indissoluble bond with billiards, because inexperienced players are labeled as "snooker". [8]

Snooker competition developed in the second half of the 9th century and the beginning of the 20th century. By the year of 1927, the first World Snooker Championship [5] was organized by joe davis. As a professional British billiards and snooker player, he brought this sport from a pastime to a more professional field. [9] joe davis won every world championship until he retired with 1946. This game gradually declined in the 1950 and 1960' s, and people outside the player showed little interest in it. In 1959, Davis introduced a variant of this game, called snooker plus, trying to increase the popularity of this game by adding two extra colors. However, it never caught on.

A major development took place in 1969, when David Attenborough entrusted Pot Black, a snooker tournament, to show the potential of color TV. Green tables and multicolored balls were ideal choices to show the advantages of color broadcasting. This TV series was a success in ratings and once became the most popular program of BBC 2. People's interest in this sport has increased, and 1978 World Championship was fully televised for the first time. This sport has quickly become the mainstream sport in Britain, Ireland and most parts of the Commonwealth, and has achieved great success in the past 30 years. Most of the ranking matches have been televised. A total of18.5 million spectators watched the final match of the World Champions League between dennis taylor and Steve Davis OBE. [15] In recent years, the loss of tobacco sponsorship has led to a decrease in the number of professional competitions, although some new sponsors have been found; This sport is very popular in the Far East and China, and the emergence of rookie like Liang and veteran players like Ding Junhui indicates the bright future of this sport in this region. [4][ 17]