Snooker Best Shot UK Championship 2023 Recreated

The UK Championships is one of the biggest tournaments of the year, so it's hardly surprising players were having to attempt some of the most difficult shots we've seen all season and find their own unique ways of completing these shots. So to find out which of these shots is best, as usual, we're recreating all of them as accurately as possible and then playing them in the fewest possible attempts. So who better to start with than new UK champion Ronnie O'Sullivan, potting the ball that puts him in a position to win the tournament. I'm not sure what's better from here, the fact that he pots this red, or that he somehow manages to make a frame winning break from this position, with the balls being in some very awkward locations. Ronnie actually overscrews this shot, he's playing for the blue here, but ends up getting back onto the green. So of course I'm trying to do the same thing, and ended up getting this shot a lot quicker than I expected to. Ding needs to get in position on the black to stay in the tournament, and the only way he can do this is by top spinning the cue ball and making it arc all the way around the middle pocket. This was especially significant because Ding made it all the way through to the final, and it would have made a huge difference if he'd been out at this stage of the event. Ding was using top spin to make the cue ball arc around the pocket and right hand side to make it go down towards the black, and it was this I was having trouble with and I kept hitting the jaw. Eventually I was able to strike it with enough power to avoid the pocket altogether and head down towards the black. A match winner from Mark Selby on the blue now, as he's faced with this difficult shot having to bridge over the top of the black, and manages to pop the blue. He gets a little bit fortunate to get the bump on the middle pocket, leaving him in position on the pink, but this was a great pop from this position. Now interestingly with this shot, despite the fact I made sure I lined up the position of the balls perfectly, I just couldn't seem to get the cue ball to break wide enough. Every time I played this shot it didn't go anywhere near the middle pocket, and on my second attempt where I potted this, I ended up the wrong side of the pink. The only thing I could think of is I was unintentionally applying a small amount of left hand side to the cue ball because of the proximity of the black, or possibly that Mark played this shot with a tiny trace of right hand side somehow, making the cue ball break wider. So I just about got on the pink in the end, but couldn't get anywhere near the middle pocket. Sean Murphy controls the pace of this long red really well, avoiding everything with a cue ball, and ending up in good position on the black. For some reason on my first attempt I thought this shot needed left hand side, I just got down on it and looked right, but I quickly realised you just need to play this shot with backspin alone, and after I did that I started to get a lot closer to the pot. The thing I did completely forget to do is watch exactly how Sean played the shot, because I thought he was playing it around 2 cushions to finish on the black, which I eventually got, however he played it around 3, I just didn't notice this. A clever enough from Jamie Clark now helps him back to 5 all from 5-1 down, in a match he'd eventually go on to win. How well I'm able to set this up will make a big difference in my ability to play this shot I feel. Looked like I set up my first attempt about right, but it's always a bit of a guess, and as it turned out I put the first red a little bit too far to the left hand side, so I adjusted this slightly and it went into my second. I got the wrong side of the blue with a cue ball though. Next Ronnie manages to cannon the red away from the cushion here, allowing him to go on and win the frame against Hossein Vafai, but it's far from easy as the shot he's playing is incredibly straight, but Ronnie manages to force an angle and get the cannon perfectly. And as you can see in order to force this angle I have to pop the red into the side of the pocket, and I was really having trouble potting the ball like this. When I eventually did get it I got enough speed on the cue ball, but with this much power it's really difficult to get the cannon, in fact it's difficult to get anywhere near this red. I was expecting to have a little bit of trouble with this shot just because of how straight it was, but I didn't really appreciate just how difficult it was to get the cannon here until I tried to play it. This was a lot harder than I thought it was. This long red from Ding from under the bolt cushion gets him out of a lot of trouble in this frame, and although he doesn't eventually go on to win it, it acts as a catalyst allowing him to get back to 4-all at the end of the session. At least this shot isn't difficult to explain, you just have to pot the red and hit the cue ball really, really, really hard. Unfortunately though, as hitting the blue here shows, it is a little bit more complicated than that. You have to pot it clean enough so you avoid the jaws of the pocket, and obviously the blue that I crashed into earlier. Considering how difficult this shot is, I was actually happy that I potted it within a few goes, and that I got it just a handful of shots later, even though this time unfortunately I hit the jaw. So that said, if you're trying to get the cue ball back into bulk at the same time as potting this shot, it is about as difficult as it gets, and when I finally got it avoiding the blue, I nearly got the white back there, but this is about as hard as I could hit it. Screwing the cue ball back from out of the pocket isn't necessarily that difficult, unless you're as far away as Hossein Vafai is here, and not only does he manage to screw the cue ball back, he gets it halfway down the table, and leaves himself a chance at a pot on the colour. As I couldn't find anybody playing a successful double this week, this is forming part of a new feature I'm calling your shot was good, but theirs was better. To play this shot I'm using the usual trick of a really clean cue ball, and that got me back to roughly where Hossein got, so that was pretty good. But this from Luca Brassell is better, not just screwing the cue ball back halfway down the table, but getting the white all the way back to the bulk cushion. With the cue ball being about the same distance away as the previous shot, I'm going to just have to hope I can strike it even better, and get even more backspin on the cue ball. But first I'm going to have to hit it straight enough, I was trying to inject so much power into my first attempt I didn't hit it anywhere near straight, and my second and third attempt just didn't have enough backspin on them, I didn't get anywhere near the bulk line let alone the bulk cushion on these shots. However on my fourth attempt I knew I'd given it absolutely everything, I just can't screw back any further than this. But I can now tell you which shot was better. As I've already said, Hossein's shot was good, but Luca's was better as he managed to screw all the way back to the bulk cushion, and he's this week's winner. Mark Allen plays an excellent positional shot off the green now, splitting a reds open about as well as he possibly can from this position. So I'm trying to screw the cue ball into the reds as fast as possible here, but I'm not expecting to have the cue power to get them open anywhere near as much as Mark did. On my first attempt I hit them but covered off absolutely everything, so I had to have another go, and on my second attempt they opened a little tiny bit better. I was on a red and that's about the best I could do. This plant from Mark Williams now is perfectly played and gets in great position at the same time. This seems like the sort of shot I should get on my first attempt, so let's see how well I do. Unfortunately it was a little bit harder to line up than I was expecting, because I just couldn't see for the first couple of shots where the red was going. Matt Self's got the snooker he needs now in behind the black, but unfortunately he fluked the red at the same time, so he ends up having to pot this black to keep himself in the game. When I initially hit this shot I was pretty confident I'd overcut it, and that's how it looked all the way down, so I was surprised to see it drop in in the end. Ronnie plays a really thin cut on the brown now, but not only does he manage to keep the cue ball on the table, he also somehow manages to get position on the red at the same time. The problem with a cue ball bouncing off the rails like this is it's very difficult to predict. A slight difference in height will make a big difference in speed and even the angle of the shot, so on my second attempt when I somehow ended up on the right red, even though not quite in the right way, I just stuck with this. I'm not sure why Mark Selby doesn't just play for the black with this red down the cushion when he's potting this well, but as it turns out he screws it all the way back into bulk, more or less to the bulk cushion, so that's what we're doing. This is clearly one of the most difficult shots I've had to play so far, so while I'm trying to get it I can explain to about the four people who'll be interested what's going on with the right side of the screen right now, by which I mean the shelving I've taken down so I can start soundproofing the wall. Every time a car drives by at the moment I have to stop filming and restart the entire clip. Obviously it doesn't matter when I'm playing shots like this, but when I'm talking to the camera or recording voiceovers like now, then it's a real problem. So I'm hoping to get that done in the next couple of weeks, but in the meantime I finally managed to pot the red and because the cue ball's really clean I got it back nearly far enough. On to a great long red from Ronnie from one of the early matches. This one's gonna need some good long cueing as well and with this one more than anything I kept having a little bit of trouble with the angle and that's why I hit a lot of these shots too thick. Obviously this shot is far from easy and at this distance when you have to play a shot with this much power I was just having trouble cutting the ball very slightly to the right. I also feel I was a little bit unlucky with this one as there was a number of shots that I got very close to but unfortunately they didn't quite rattle and go in. Unsurprisingly when I do pot the ball I hit it a little bit too straight as well and that's why the white doesn't quite go in the right place. I've got the glove on which can only mean one thing it's time for an Anthony McGill shot and he cues this one really well generating a lot of spin on the cue ball and all the way back into bulk. Of course the main reason Anthony needs the glove is because he's using a graphite cue which are notorious for getting a little bit sticky. I'm just using an ash cue so will the glove make any difference in my ability to pop the ball and screw back far enough? Probably not but I was still pleased to get the shot this quickly. We've got a Hossein Vafai shot coming up next right after we find Fred who's in Pearsburg Virginia which is there. With this shot Hossein pots along red and uses backspin to arc the cue ball around the blue for position on a bulk colour. Yet again I made the mistake of not fully appreciating what a player was trying to do with the shot so my first attempt I was just playing for the blue. I managed to get this but unfortunately the white isn't anywhere near the right position. This time however I noticed and I was really happy to get two for two out of this shot even if I didn't quite screw back far enough. Another awkward shot to play right-handed because my hand's going to be on the side cushion with this yellow down the cushion from Judd Trump but as he pots it clean we're going to have to have a go at it. I know I could have just set this up on the other side of the table and used a mirror image like I'd done with previous videos but honestly this one didn't feel too difficult to have your hand on the cushion like this and I knew I'd get it pretty quickly anyway. My plan was to try and play the shot as slowly as possible to give the yellow the maximum chance of dropping which it did quicker than expected. So for the results third place goes to Ding Xiong Wei. Not only was this a really clever way to play the shot it was a match saver and made a big difference in the tournament as a whole. Second place goes to Mark Selby with another match winning shot bridging over the black and potting the blue in this situation was really tough. But first place goes to Ronnie O'Sullivan with the Having had to play this it was the hardest shot I had to play because it was just so straight and it made it really difficult to get the white back at the right angle. Talking of Ronnie because we did such a good job promoting his newly released coaching course we've now been offered the rocket method with a 20% discount. Just use the promo code BREAK20 when you go to the website snooker.online where you can get free access to the first episode. The website link will take you right there and the other two links are some of my previous shot recreation videos. So remember don't just watch play and make the commitment to becoming a better player by subscribing to the channel. See you later.