Snooker World Championship Best Shots 2023 Recreated

What was the best shot of the entire World Championships? I've made a list of the top 20 shots from Sheffield and as usual we're going to be finding out which is best by attempting to recreate all of them as accurately as possible before playing them in the fewest possible attempts. Unsurprisingly quite a few of them aren't Luca Brussels shots like this first one from Mark Allen who manages to screw the cue ball all the It's almost impossible to play these types of shots on a similar table to the one you'd find in your local club but that's a challenge facing me now. So this one's going to need a large amount of backspin and a small amount of cue ball trickery but first I'm going to need to pot the red. I'm deliberately using a cue ball that's a fraction lighter than the rest of the balls which makes up for the fact my table isn't as reactive but doesn't make up for the fact that I haven't got as much cue power as Mark Allen so I was unbelievably satisfied with the result here. A snooker now from Ronnie O'Sullivan who screws the cue ball all the way down the table to get it tight in behind the black and it ends up winning in the frame. Ronnie looked on for winning a record-breaking eighth world title this year and even led Luca Brussels into the final session of their quarterfinal match until Luca ran away with it right at the very end. Getting enough backspin on this shot really wasn't easy and I was struggling to do this until my third attempt. Unfortunately with this one I hit the green so the red didn't come back down the table but I still easily got the snooker. This positional shot from Mark Selby shows he's starting to play his best stuff again as he uses it to take out a crucial clearance against Mark Allen and get within one frame of the final. This was right before Mark Allen made a comeback and got very close to making it a deciding frame so who knows what would have happened if Mark Selby hadn't got this shot right. I was pretty confident when I stood over this one and I was delighted to see I've got the perfect line and she ended up even closer to the reds than Mark Selby did. Now to somebody we literally couldn't keep off the table this year. No, not him. I'm talking about new world champion Luca Brussels who's lining up a really thin cut here to the middle pocket. This is just a really powerful exhibition shot from Luca but it looked really impressive. However what doesn't look impressive is when you jump around in front of the camera and block everybody's view. So I'll try to explain what happened. I missed the first three shots as they were a little bit harder than I was expecting it. I set the fourth one up a little bit thin so I nearly missed the jaw and the fifth one was about right even though I just nicked the black on the way past. Next is an excellent positional shot of the blue from Mark Selby who's fighting back from a 5-1 deficit in the final and manages to find the perfect cannon on the pink and black to retain position. I usually find getting a precise amount of sidespin on this type of shot incredibly challenging and that was true of my first attempt. I got absolutely nowhere near it. My second was a lot better. In fact I nicked the red onto the pink. It was slightly lucky and I was a bit too close to the red but I still managed to Luca Brussels also tried to get in position on the yellow of the black but he doesn't have such a straightforward shot and ends up having to play a full exhibition shot to get the yellow off the cushion and continue his crucial break. This allowed him to come back from 3-1 down against Mark Williams and eventually go on to win the match fairly comfortably. Sometimes when I attempt difficult shots like this one I manage to find a way of playing them pretty quickly. This definitely wasn't one of those times as I got close to canning the yellow out but couldn't quite make it happen and especially annoying was my fifth attempt where I got the cue ball in behind the yellow but ended up in behind the brown and I think this was my fault because I put the brown a little bit too far from the cushion so I put it a little bit closer so next time this definitely wouldn't happen. But what made this one so difficult was having to time the backspin on the cloth. If you hit it too slow you'd hit the blue and if you hit it too hard you wouldn't make it backspin at all. You had to get the pace absolutely perfect here along with the pot and the side spin. I was really pleased to get this after 10 attempts because it felt longer. Sean Murphy's next and he manages to pull off an almost impossible shot to keep his hopes alive in the first round of the tournament. Sean definitely played this because he had a look at it beforehand and saw the red only went in off the other red by the pocket and not directly so this now means I have to attempt to pot the red into what is the equivalent of quarter of a pocket from nine feet away off the bulk cushion. After fluking a red I miraculously potted it the way I was intending but watch the red below the one I'm playing. I just very slightly nicked it on the way down. I didn't notice this when I was playing it. Matthew Sell was three nil down against Mark Selby until he found this double and this one was really impressive as he doubled the red all the way up into the yellow pocket and went on to clear up and win the frame. Even though Matthew Sell eventually lost this match he competed a lot better than most people expected him to and this shot was a real challenge. I was fairly lucky to get it on my third attempt because the pocket was just so far away. And to challenge that it's Luca Brussel again. I told you we couldn't keep him off the table. This one's definitely more of a fluke because he was probably only trying to double it off the one cushion however I still thought I'd have a go at it to see if it was possible. I was also trying to count on the pink on this shot but knew this really wasn't easy and the red itself was difficult because it kept squaring up the more cushions it hit meaning I had quite a small space to get it into. You may have noticed something weird with the camera on this one and it's that I left stabilization on so for some reason the shot's rotating around to the right very slowly. I corrected it a bit in the edit but that's why the yellow pocket seems to be rising up in the air. For the shot itself I didn't really think this was going to be possible. I didn't seem to be able to stop it squaring up until my eighth attempt where it just about seemed to be on the right line. So which of these was the cheekiest double? Cue the music. Luca played the sort of shot we like to see although it was a bit of a fluke but because it was so eventful I'm still giving it four cheeky chillies whereas Matt's self shot he definitely played and it made a big difference in the game. So he also gets four cheeky chillies but his was the more significant so he's this week's winner. A nice long red from John Higgins now that got him to win his match against Kyron Wilson and nearly saw him make a 1-4-7 maximum break. John cruised all the way to the quarter finals before losing out to Mark Selby but this just shows how well he was cueing as this is a tough shot off the cushion. I got it on my third attempt which I was really happy with because I thought it would take me a little bit longer than this. Guess who I'm about to show escaping from a really tough snooker and leaving the balls completely safe? Yep you're right. From everything I saw this was the best snooker escape of the tournament because the only way to leave the safe was to rest on the red by the black and it was almost impossible to get it there as I discovered on my first few attempts you only had to be a little bit out and you'd hit the pink one way or another. A few shots in I had to convince myself that this was actually possible and that I'd set the balls up in the correct place because I seemed to be getting as close as I could possibly get but still not hitting the red so what I started to do was aim further down the cushion and strike the cue ball with slightly less side spin to try and square up the angle which was beginning to work but on my fourth attempt I didn't get the line right. My fifth attempt was a lot better but had I got the correct speed because if it was a bit too hard it was going to come through the gap. Nopon Soundcam showing excellent control of the cue ball to bring the black into play next off this tough long red. It only just stops over the pocket which was fortunate but unfortunately for me I lost the file containing the first six attempts so we're coming in on the seventh and I've already potted it, got the cannon and snooker myself on the black twice so when I got on the black on my eighth attempt like this I was happy enough with it. Luca Brossell brings the red into play here with the perfect weight to leave it over the middle pocket. This is yet another shot that looks like an exhibition shot but once again the frame is still live and Luca uses this to go on and take it. However I wasn't finding it quite so easy at least initially because I thought you had to stun it a little bit where it turned out you didn't you just need to play it with top spin and right hand side and this meant I was getting at least close to getting the can on the red every time. The third attempt was particularly unlucky because I nudged it towards the pocket just not quite hard enough. What makes this shot so difficult is it's not just about getting a cannon on the red it's getting the right cannon at the right speed to push it towards the pocket. My seventh attempt knocked it slightly away from the pocket but I could still cut it in easily enough from there. Next is the controversial Hossein Vafai shot. No not that one that didn't really help him in any way. I'm talking about the positional shot against Ding when he was trying to make a maximum break. This was controversial because players usually try to win the frame first before taking any risks but Hossein not only played this shot he also called it out to the crowd. It took me a little longer than I was expecting to find the angle on this shot but this allowed me to understand how you need to play it. I initially thought you needed to play it with right hand side but this would make you go the other side of the blue. Ended up more or less perfect. Jimmy Robertson's in a little bit of trouble against Mark Williams next but after he obtains all the long rests he manages to pot his way out of it. Jimmy was competing fairly well in this first round match against Mark Williams until he lost the final six frames. To play this shot you need a small amount of side to avoid the yellow. I ended up potting this shot first time off the side cushion which isn't ideal but okay I think. This powerful screw shot might be the last we see from Luca Brassell although I doubt it as he's trying to take a 10-5 lead over Mark Selby. But it ended up being the only point he scored in that frame. Either way I'm going to need really good cueing with this one and I just about got away with it on my first attempt. But if you are looking to improve your cueing you can always sign up to the Rocket Method, Ronnie O'Sullivan's official coaching program by going to www.snooker.online and by using the promo code BREAK you'll be able to get a 5% discount on all 12 episodes. Somehow it's taken us this entire video to get to C Xaiwei as he pots his way out of trouble with this long blue. Before the biggest ever comeback in Crucible history from Luca Brassell C looked like he was going to go on and win this and shots like this showed why. It's not particularly tough but it's a good pressure shot so I was happy to get it straight away. We've got a Kyron Wilson shot coming up next after we find Big J who's from which is there. Kyron was another player who promised much in this tournament with 147s and big long pots like this one but ended up getting annihilated by John Higgins in the end. Either way this was still going to be a really difficult shot because of how hard I had to hit it and that's why on my second attempt instead of putting my fingers on the cushion I rested them against it so I had more room to bridge. That worked out on my third attempt and went pretty well I thought. This time playing an unnecessary yellow we have yet another Luca Brassell shot as he refuses to play safe with this one. This was in the first few frames against Ronnie O'Sullivan where he seemed to be refusing to turn anything down. This is a really tough shot though with a right hand side you need on it so I was really happy it went in straight away. Coming up next is an almost impossible plant from C Xaiwei and the reason I left this to right at the end of the video is I knew it would probably take up a couple of minutes trying to get it. If not a couple of hours because there's so much distance between the reds here that you've got to plant towards the pocket. I couldn't believe it when it went into my second attempt it was more luck than judgment but I was happy just to get it over with. So for the results and third place goes to Mark Selby with this snooker escape. You had to be incredibly accurate to hit a red and not leave anything on and the fact that he got it first time made it all the more impressive. Second place goes to C Xaiwei who had an incredible tournament and this plant just shows off the type of shots he's able to play. But first place goes to the positional shot on the yellow from Luca Brassell. If he played this as an exhibition shot it would have been good but the fact that he played it in the middle of a key clearance when he was behind in the match made it all the more impressive. So what have we learned from all of this? Well if you're as good as Luca Brassell you can win the world championships without really practicing. Ronnie O'Sullivan and Hossein Vafaya are friends again at least according to Ronnie. Jumping around in front of a camera will ruin any YouTube video. Olivier Martel surprisingly strong and has quick reactions for a man of his age. And Mark Selby's last minute 147 seems to have barely put a dent in Kyron Wilson's end of season party plans. But if you're not ready for the season to end quite yet then why not have a look at our recreation videos from previous tournaments like the Masters and remember don't just watch play and make the commitment to becoming a better player by subscribing to the channel and visit the website. See you later.