Snooker Best Shots Recreated Ronnie O'Sullivan Explained

Just how good is this shot from Ronnie O'Sullivan? Over the last few years I've been developing a system to work out exactly that, although I've never explained how it works, so I thought now would be a great time. I begin by seeing how many attempts it takes me to recreate the shot as accurately as I can, and then I use a scoring system to judge those attempts. It includes recreational accuracy and shot difficulty, but what do these actually mean? To start off with, recreational accuracy depends on how well I've got the shot set up in the first place, because if I haven't got the balls in the correct position I can't play the shot accurately and it'll inevitably get marked down. Now on this Ronnie O'Sullivan shot, let's say I have got everything set up right, it all depends on how close I can get to playing exactly the same shot that Ronnie did. If you notice here, Ronnie pots the red off the far jaw, meaning the white jumps out a little bit wider, so even though I set up the same angle, because I've potted the red more into the centre of the pocket, actually potted it cleaner, the shot will get marked down because the whites come out further. I've actually played more of a similar shot this time, this would get a better score, but when I actually played the white was here somewhere, and that means it'll only get an 8 out of 10 rating, because the shot isn't exactly the same. Now for the way it's scored, if Ronnie got the cueball into exactly this position, and I'm somewhere around about here within about a ball length, that'll get 10 out of 10. If it's a little bit wider than that it'll get 9, and if we say my cueball was about here, it was just outside a 9 and an 8, there's no scientific way of working this out, it just looks a certain distance away, and that probably just slipped into an 8. The way I usually look at this, is half the shot here would be potting the red, and half the shot would be getting the cueball in the right place. So if I pot the red and the cueball goes virtually anywhere, it's probably still going to get 5 out of 10. And now you're probably wondering, why doesn't that shot just get 1 out of 10, and you assume you've got to pot the ball? Well because of all the shots I played earlier and missed, what score would they have got? When I hit here on the cushion, that might be a 3 or a 2 out of 10. So you've got to consider the shots I've missed as well having a score, and I'm trying to get the best possible score I can get, or an acceptable score, before I move on and play the next shot. The shot difficulty is a lot easier to explain, and could be even easier still if I'd flipped it on its head and done it the other way around. But I decided to make 10 out of 10 the most difficult. However the way it works, is I just simply ask myself the question, how many times out of 10 do I think I'll pot this shot? Now if the answer is 10 out of 10, which has only happened once, I think it was a weird shot that required playing a spider and put your hand on top of the spider. But it turns out the shot that was being attempted, though fascinating, was all unmissable that I'm trying to reimagine now. Then it gets a 1 out of 10 rating. 1 out of 10 basically means I'd expect to pot this shot every single time. Now 2 out of 10 means I'd miss it once, 3 out of 10 means I'd miss it twice. It's simple but it's not perfect, and it goes all the way up to 9 out of 10, which would mean that I'd only get the shot one time out of 10. But it does allow us to have a 10 out of 10, that means that I am likely to get the shot less than once in 10, which is the hardest rating and could also mean I was getting the shot less than once in 30, 40 or even 50. I'm usually a bit pessimistic with my estimations, but with the Ronnie shot I'd assume I'd get it around about 3 out of 10, which means it gets a 7 out of 10 difficulty rating. So this shot gets 7 out of 10 for difficulty, and at the same time I played it with an 8 out of 10 accuracy. So let's move on and look at a couple more examples so you can understand this. And this Mark Williams shot is a little bit different because he can't see the red over the pocket, so he's not playing a traditional pot, he's playing the cannon to knock the red in over the pocket and it gives him good position. Without playing this shot for myself, I have absolutely no idea how difficult it's going to be, and I can see after just one attempt that it's actually a lot easier than I was assuming it would be. However, getting the cue ball out far enough, as Mark did for the pink, is going to be a little bit more tricky. On the majority of these shots I'm getting the cannon, but Mark had better control of the cue ball than I did to make sure he hit the top cushion just before the red, and that gets it out for the pink. I finally got the shot close here, but as you can see I've just hit it a little bit too hard and I'm unfortunate that the red's dropped in front of the pink. A little bit softer, and this would have got 10 out of 10 recreational accuracy, but because the red's blocking the pocket it means I don't actually have a shot on the pink the next shot Mark played, so it drops it way down to a 7. As for the difficulty, this shot is actually a lot easier than I thought, and I reckon I'd get it about 50-50, so it's a 5 out of 10 shot. Even though this Neil Robertson shot at least looks tougher, there are fewer moving parts. To start off with I only have to make sure I get the cue ball in the right place, because as we can see the black itself is on its spot, so it's a lot simpler to set up, and there's a lot less to think about in terms of the position of the balls at the end of the shot. Similar to the Ronnie shot, I'm just looking to get the cue ball in the right place here, nothing else is going to move. I've got it, but unfortunately the cue ball's gone in off, so that doesn't really count as a proper attempt, so I'd almost always start again there. I'm happy to get it with the next shot, and this is definitely a good enough attempt, but because I've hit it so soft, at least in comparison to Neil, so it only gets 8 out of 10 recreation accuracy. When it comes to difficulty, I still think even though I put it twice in a row, I'd only get it twice out of 10, so that gets an 8 out of 10 difficulty rating. Which if I had to guess before I attempted the shot, I would have said it was a 9 out of 10. The reason I film this video now is I'm actually on holiday for a bit. I'm not sure what's going to be happening next week when I'm still on holiday. I've literally got 20 minutes left now to film a video, and I have no idea what I'm doing yet, so whatever happens next week will just be whatever I can think of in the next 20 minutes, and the more I talk the more I'm running out of time. So 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!