Snooker? Bent? Read on..............

[10ClarionSt]

...........about 15 years ago, the BBC were covering the UK Open Tournament. The Sunday Times tv supplement had coverage for the following Thursdays semi-final in the schedules and named the two players who would be taking part and those two players did indeed contest the semi-final. So how did they know who the players would be? Especially as those supplements are printed a couple of weeks in advance. I phoned the BBC and the Sunday Times but they couldn't give me an answer.

[Eljohnno]

Yeh right I believe you ! And they predicted the finalists of the varsity boat race

[jackthehat]

This is not the first time that you claim to have read something in a newspaper/magazine years ago which you cannot produce, now..............

[sandyRoe]

Some years ago there were some very large bets that Salvino Francisco would lose by a given number of frames. Coincidence, or what?

[bobthebandit]

The game of snooker has been bent for years,and goes right back to the black ball final between Steve Davis and Dennis Taylor in 1985.

[lesblue]

I am sure it has been bent for years. A mate of mine used to have a system in which he could whittle down the "upcoming winners" to two or three players. Not so much in the World title, but certainly in the many lower ranking tournaments. We made quite a profit at the bookies, because we were able to discount a number of top players simply because "it wasn't their turn."

[BertiWooster]

I saw that final frame again yesterday ( the one with various people giving their views on it )

I must admit that for two top players , the amount of pots that they missed seemed rather unusual - compared to todays players .

Are todays players just better ?