Snooker

[TeenPlusCat]

I've been dipping in and out of the snooker this week, and a bit came up this afternoon about the women's world championship, and the fact that 2 women are now qualified to go on the main tour.
Anyway, they mentioned in passing that the first transgender (MtF) snooker player had got to the semi finals (Jamie Hunter).

Now obviously there is no obvious physical disadvantage to women playing snooker (except I suspect height and reach will still make a difference), but there is obviously a women's competition for a reason....
A teen boy hanging out playing pool/snooker would be a lot more usual than a teen girl, so at the age Jamie was developing their skills, a girl would be much less likely to have felt welcome?

I'm not convinced tracking images at speed comes into it?
You have to work out where to hit the ball and hit it.
Then when everything is at rest, do it again.

Spatial awareness, physics, steady hands, and tactical play.

Putting it crudely tits are a disadvantage, when I played (nowhere near professional, barely pub league) they restricted how low you could get on the table to sight the shot.
You can see the difference in the men's game because at the crucible they must wear a waistcoat (not at other ranking tourneys) and even the top flight players are constantly adjusting and conscious of the hindrance. Having a pair of giant battleships in amongst the pack forces you to play accordingly.

Agree with other comments, in 'sports' like snooker the value of a women's category has nothing to do with inescapable biological advantages, and lots to do with vastly, vastly different participation rates between the sexes. So it's more akin to a woman's only science or maths prize or scholarship or whatever.

Any teenaged girl who spent the hundreds/thousands of hours in grotty snooker/pool halls that'd be needed to compete with the top men would likelier than not end up linked to more cases of [varying degrees of] sexual harrassment than Jimmy Savile, albeit from a rather different perspective.

So, yeah, I don't at all support allowing 'trans women' to compete for prizes which have been endowed specifically to encourage female participation.

Height and arm length do make a difference in snooker/ pool. Of course they do. Social factors matter too when it comes to fairness. Snooker halls can be quite intimidating for girls in a way they aren’t for boys. So boys can get more practice in when young. My ds plays pool with his friends without a second though. My dd although older would never just go to the pool hall with her friends. And that’s because she is female and he is male.
So I would agree it is unfair as males have advantage ( and menstruating each month etc is a disadvantage for all women and girls for all sorts of activities generally. It’s just something makes do not have to deal with)

Yes, you could be right. I will continue to look for more reasons that DP somehow managed to beat me.

His height and arm reach seem to be rather a huge factor, though.

Try playing with a 6 yo child, same issue in reverse, you're far more likely to win. It's better for the ego.

I honestly don't think the physical side of it is that big a deal. Or at least it's not on a par with some of the really laughably egregious recent examples, like Lia Thomas in swimming [the average height for a male olympic swimmer is c 6'3", with physiques uniformly tending towards the herculean] or Laurel Hubbard in weightlifting [the average height for a male superheavyweight olympic lifter is c 6'4", with physiques uniformly tending towards the mountainous].

Top male snooker players tend to be a little taller than average, but there's also room at the very top for someone like a John Higgins, who's about 5'8" & rather tubby/physically unimposing.

So, yeah, I don't at all support allowing 'trans women' to compete for prizes which have been endowed specifically to encourage female participation.

Me neither. And I don't care if it makes me "look like a bigot" or whatever, sex classes are there for a reason, otherwise get rid of them.

I'm tired of these male people constantly taking stuff from women.

May I? I am an exercise physiologist, retired.

Female body: breasts which can cause issues when leaning over the table. And that Q angle, can cause issues with the efficiency of the oft seen one legged lean.

Then height, arm length for reach across balls and table. Hand size for forming a bridge over balls.

And then the whole a man is a man not a woman and any time a man is entered into a female space, anywhere, any type, he is taking the place of a woman and displacing many others.

As for women in the men's game, well, the fact that only the top 2 women players are currently in the open rankings, and few women have made it previously, should give you a clue that it isn't as straight forward as you think.

John Higgins' arm movements are not impeded by breasts, I am going to guess.

Top male snooker players tend to be a little taller than average, but there's also room at the very top for someone like a John Higgins, who's about 5'8" & rather tubby/physically unimposing.

One of the issues is the 'foot on the floor rule'. Sometimes I see players right on tiptoe so they don't have to use a rest instead. A 5ft2 player would presumably have to use a rest more frequently than a 5ft8 player?
Once you can reach say half way across the width of the table I suspect height matters less.

(And I bet the standard height of a snooker table has been set with the average male height in mind somewhere along the line...)

Thnks, Samphire, for a more sciencey explanation than 'my DPs biggern me' .

Finding it a bit baffling that anyone would say all of these issues wouldn't have a HUGE effect on playing prowess.

This thread is quite interesting - www.reddit.com/r/snooker/comments/e5ws1e/heights_of_unique_world_champions_since_1980/.

It does appear suggest a reasonably clear advantage of height, hardly on a par with basketball but not nothing either.

So apart from height, arm length, tits and handsize...I'm going to beat this analogy until it's dead!

I’m enjoying your work on this thread…

I just noticed this - what on earth is this drivel supposed to mean?

Men's competition already is open to women, most earth-shatteringly obviously of all open to 'trans women', but there are well established reasons why women's-only competition is attractive [not least to trans women].

It's back to the Emily Bridges scenario, I'd cheer her on and wish her to win if she rode in her sex class.

Top male snooker players tend to be a little taller than average, but there's also room at the very top for someone like a John Higgins, who's about 5'8" & rather tubby/physically unimposing.

Higgins lost a power of weight recently.

I can't believe people are trying to dismiss the physical differences. Yes, men and women could compete more equally than say basketball but women would still be at a disadvantage, winning far fewer competitions. It wouldn't be fair.

I want to watch the best people play sport to the top of human endeavour. Snooker shouldn't be segregated in that way neither darts so I would happily watch women in those sports because there is no biological reason why. Tennis athletics and football I'm sorry but the women are never going to run as fast jump as high or hit the ball as hard therefore I am simply not going to see women competing in those sports I'm not interested. Spectator Sport for me is about watching the best humans I certainly don't want to see women's sports segregated away where there is no physical reason they can't compete with men.

Reanne Evans has competed on the main tour before, and she isn't the only woman to have done so.

I find womens tennis interesting precisely because they can't hit the ball so hard, but that's by the by.

John Higgins at 5'8 has been cited as short for a snooker player which should tell you that it's better to be taller.
But the average woman is around 3" shorter.

I don't give a shit if a male is the smallest most petite and dainty male in the world, he can still fuck off out of women's sporting competitions.

So many looking for excuses to allow men to compete against women because in snooker 'sex doesn't matter'.
No. It does fucking matter because it's a gateway to allowing men in ALL women's sports and knowing that they are men is not fucking bigoted.

They can call themselves what they like but women do not have to provide these men with validation for their ideological beliefs, and our spaces and sports are not theirs to colonise and claim as their own.

How so many women fawn all over males who claim to be women is beyond me.

Mind you, if tits are a disadvantage, that would work against most transwomen too.

You beat me to it, even in a friendly game of pool my boobs get in the way massively.