Play 11 racks of nine-ball, though, and you could hope to win one or two, but rarely, if ever, the majority. Whatever your standard, there will be plenty of moments when you look – and feel – much better than you are.Ronnie O’Sullivan, of course, would look good if was using his cue to swat flies. In partnership with Ralf “The Kaiser” Souquet, he won his opening match on Thursday night to wild rejoicing in a partisan crowd in Bethnal Green, and the atmosphere should be better still as the Cup reaches its climax this weekend.Many great boxers have started out at the York Hall, and snooker too may have a fight on its hands. As The Nugget says: “Anyone who thinks that just because snooker is a great game, it will be the only game, is living in a fantasy world.”The Mosconi Cup continues today and concludes tomorrow at York Hall, Bethnal Green Sessions start at 3.0pm and 7.0pm, admission free.. Darren Corbett is banking on his punching power ending the unbeaten run of Birmingham’s Rob Norton when Northern Ireland’s Commonwealth cruiserweight champion makes the first defence of his title in Belfast tonight.

The 24-year-old Ulsterman is confident of inflicting a first defeat on Norton, who boasts a record of 16 wins and one draw.
“He said that it will be easy and he’ll stop me in four rounds,” Corbett said “He’s in for a big surprise If he thinks I’m letting my belt go, he can forget it. You must play the lowest-numbered ball on the table first in any shot, but so long as any ball drops, your break continues. When breaking off, therefore, you smack the one-ball as hard as you can, and hope that something – anything – drops (except, of course, the cue ball).If it happens to be the nine – unusual, but not unheard of – you win immediately. Otherwise, you keep potting in ascending order, before rounding off with the nine – or take advantage of a situation which allows you to play the lowest ball first and pocket the nine too. They use standard American pool balls, numbered one to nine, and whoever pockets the nine-ball wins.

The balls are racked in a diamond, with the nine in the middle, the one at the front, and the others arranged randomly. In nine-ball, the table is effectively crowded, because the balls are big and table is small. It’s easy to pot a ball and then cover yourself up, which is fatal, and so it’s all about positional play.”As is so often the case with intriguing games, the rules are deceptively simple. And while a nine-ball table is much bigger, 9ft x 41/2ft, so too are the pockets, which to anyone brought up on snooker look more like bin bags.”Eight-ball is a babies’ game,” Davis says, “this is the one for grown- ups. Eight-ball is quite fun, but the weakness, especially on a pub table, is that the pockets aren’t that big, and the game is all strategy, cover the pockets and take control.