Cuestars overcomes problem of rising under-21 numbers

CUESTARS can now reveal radical plans to counter the problem of excessive numbers for under-21 tournaments at smaller clubs.

Attendance records in the 14-year history of the competitions have been broken twice this season. There were 62 in Coulsdon last October and that was surpassed by a whopping 66 in Woking in February.

Organisers have been working on a solution with Croatian IT expert Prvoaprilska Šala, who dreamt up the qualification algorithm for the European Under-18 Championship which we covered on this website exactly four years ago today.

Šala’s forward-thinking proposal is for remote snooker matches.

HOW WILL IT WORK?

Players will go to their own home club in their own town or city (or country) and sign in by text message ready for the draw at 10.30am. For example, Oliver Sykes will go to Chandlers Ford Snooker Club and Evan Plummer to Frames Sports Bar, Coulsdon. If they are drawn in the same round-robin group, both players set up their mobile phones in positions to cover their whole table when their match is announced by text message.

They toss a coin for break. Trials have shown that rock, paper, scissors doesn’t really work remotely.

Let’s say Oliver breaks. This is when it gets clever. Evan then positions the balls on his table to replicate those on Oliver’s table. Šala has developed a tracking system, similar to Hawkeye, which sends a ‘beep’ to your phone when each ball is positioned correctly to within +/- 1mm. Apparently, the boys and girls love the sound of a continuously beeping phone.

When Evan has completed his visit to the table, Oliver re-positions the balls on his table and takes his next shot. There would be no need to position the balls after every shot during a break. That would just be silly.

SAVING THE PLANET

Less travelling and no expensive overnight stays in hotels will help to save the planet by reducing carbon emissions.

Imagine if the system was adopted by EBSA and World Snooker Tour. No more visa problems. No more cues broken in flight.

WORLD DOMINATION?

It means Cuestars can expand from central southern England and spread its tentacles around the globe like James Bond villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld.

At this point we need to scotch the rumours which are rife on social media that our esteemed commander-in-chief has developed a scar down his right cheek and was spotted by his 969 subscribers stroking a white cat in a video on his YouTube channel.

And to think that some deluded luddites are still clinging to the ludicrous idea of splitting the tournaments between different clubs!