Kicks/heavy contacts in snooker

vincenzolorenzo

One thing thats been puzzling me for quite some time now, and in particular during the world champs are kicks. I've heard it explained before on the BBC that kicks happen when there is chalk present between the two balls when they collide, which seems to be fair enough. However in the recent WSC i noticed that several times when a player missed what would normally be a straightforward shot the commentators jumped straight in saying that they got a kick. Play a slow-mo replay to 'hear' the sound and to me it just sounded the exact same as normal?

I heard Dennis Taylor describing how when there's a heavy contact the cue ball/object ball or both jump off the cloth and that takes all the pace out of the ball and so on occasions when a player ran out of position it was down to a kick. But then there were plenty of shots when balls were hopping around and still the breaks continued.

So based on this i've two questions:

1. What causes kicks?
2. Do players and commentators just use the 'kick/heavy contact' excuse when a poor shot has been played rather than just admit the guy played a bad one?

zack01

Its a tricky one this one, as long as i can remember even from my playing days you would always get a kck or bad contact but not as many as we've seen in recent tournaments.
Twenty years or so ago the cloths were slightly heavier and of course the ball was the super crystalite, kinda of like the cloths and balls in your local club nowadays,these cloths could absorb particles of chalk and dust and with the ball being slightly heavier kicks and bad contacts were mnimum.in fact when you got a kick you would hear it before you saw it !!

Nowadays in the pro events the cloths are so fine that the chalk and dust really have no place to go, the cloths are so fine that if you were to spill water on them the water would not even be soaked up by the cloth it would just stay a puddle.
The balls of course are a complete different ball and are made out of a chemical composite.

This in turn means that as the cue ball rolls it will pick up tiny particles of dust and chalk and before you know it when it hits another ball it will kick on impact.

A couple of years ago the BBC showed an example of a cue ball striking an object all filmed with an ultra slow motion camera, it was amazing to see how the cue ball even before it hit the object ball bounce along the cloth, as you cannot see this with the naked eye it was incredible to watch.

Sometimes players would get a bad contact and decide to play on but the majority now would ask to have the cue ball cleaned and even tne object ball just to rule out the possibility of a kick.

I'm afraid they will continue to happen, as long as the cloths are super fine all you can do is to have the ball cleaned, it's unfortunate as one day we will see a major event decided by a kick on the final ball, as you mentioned there were a few in the recent world championships, i think none more so the the kick Peter Ebdon got when potting a black of the spot in his match against Stuart Bingham, bad luck that let Bingham win the frame and match.

califano

Good reply. Incidentally Steve Davis never fails to give an unsatisfactory answer to the "What causes kicks" question.

paddywroks

Here's a good article that explains it quite well.
http://www.dreamon.demon.co.uk/snooker/

mickdw

I figure there are a number of causes of kicks resulting in the different types of reactions we see.
As stated above, BBC superslow cameras showed the bouncing motion of the cue ball on most shots. I figure if the cue ball was to contact the object ball while it was on an upward bounce for example, this might dull the reaction of a screw shot - possibly one type of kick.
Then you have the kicks where the balls actually weld together for a micro second. Is this down to static electricity, chalk or microscopic imperfections on the surface of the ball or a combination of above? I personally think its mostly static.

In relation to your second question, when they say a kick happened, its usually pretty obvious so no, nobody really just blames a bad miss on a kick.