A question I’ve always wondered about: why are there no women snooker players anywhere in the rankings? Is it because:
The Powers That Be decree that women must enter women only tounaments, regadless of their preference.
The women themselves all would prefer to win the “women’s snooker championship” with no prestige than become a ranked player in the real championship, which has much more prestige.
or
Even the best female snooker player couldn’t compete with the male 128 seed?
If it is option 3, why are men so much better?
It is option 3. Just based on the available talent pool, I suppose. That’s the usual reason why men dominate most sports, even ones that don’t obviously discriminate between male and female physical strength, such as snooker. Young women aren’t interested in seriously playing snooker, or darts etc. Far fewer players equals far lower chances for turning up an international level player.
The gender imbalance in these sort of sports is re-inforcing, in that it’s that much harder for a woman to take up a sport with little to no female peer group.
You can speculate and say if every woman in the UK went snooker loopy, mad for the green baize, would the men still be better? Maybe they would - the mental side of competition is obviously fundamental to sport, and can differ quite substantially between men and women. But these sort of considerations are a long, long way back from my first point, which is just a shortage of participants determines the lack of competitive women players.
Allison Fisher was the top female player in women’s snooker between 1983-1995, winning seven individual world championships during this period.
She entered the male ranking system in 1994/1995 at #202, but failed to improve on this position.
In American billiards, women simply don’t have the strength that man do and therefore get two or so fewer balls in on the break on average. That’s why they are not competitive on the men’s circuit.
Is the break a key part of the game in snooker like it is in eight ball or nine ball?
The opening break is seldom hit with power in snooker, in fact I’ve never seen someone do that at the top level. Splitting the pack of reds is a strategically important event that can decide a frame, good players choose when to do so to give them the best advantage in break building.
You do need arm strength in cueing, though. Some long pots need to be hit with a lot of power depending on what needs to be done with the cue ball afterwards.
The ideal break shot disturbs the pack only slightly, and brings the cue ball back up the table to rest tight against the baulk cushion.
Unless you’re Australian player Quinton Hann, who broke off in several frames during professional matches by hitting the pack with as much power as possible. I understand he believed he had a 50% pot success rate in practice using this strategy. This rate was not achieved in match play, however, and the technique was derided by the commentators (all good ex-players) and his fellow professionals. Don’t see him around much any more…
Regarding the OP, Busy Scissors nailed it in the first reply I think.