Pool glossary
Snookered
Having no direct path to the ball you must hit.
What it means
You are snookered when another ball blocks every straight line between the cue ball and the ball you are required to contact. Your options are a kick, a masse, or a foul.
Where the word comes from
From the game of snooker, and originally British Army slang for a first-year cadet — an inexperienced player left in an impossible spot.
How it sounds at a table
"He's snookered you properly there."
What it means in a three-strikes night
In most pool games being snookered costs you a turn. In three strikes it costs you a life, which is a considerably bigger deal and why deliberate snookering is more common in this format than people expect — leaving the next player hooked is the only defensive weapon the game allows, because you cannot play a safety without taking a strike yourself.
The mistake people make
Thinking it is unsporting. Leaving the next player nothing is a legitimate consequence of where your shot finished, and in a format with one shot a turn it is often the best thing that can come out of a miss.
Terms that come up alongside it
Written out rather than linked only, because looking up one term usually means you are standing at a table and do not want four more taps.
- Kick
- The cue ball off a cushion first. A kick shot sends the cue ball into a cushion before it contacts the object ball.
- Safety
- A shot played to leave your opponent with nothing. A safety is a deliberate defensive stroke: rather than trying to pocket a ball, you aim to leave the cue ball somewhere your opponent cannot do anything useful from.
- Strike
- A missed turn. Three of them and you are out. In three-strikes pool, a strike is what you collect when your turn ends without a ball going in a pocket.
- Bank
- An object ball played off a cushion before it drops. A bank shot sends the object ball into one or more cushions on its way to the pocket.
Where it comes up
Snookered matters most in three-strikes pool, where a single turn is one shot and the cost of getting something wrong is a life rather than a visit to the table. If you are learning the game, the guide to running a night puts most of this vocabulary in context, and the format pages show which games the term applies to and which it does not.