Snooker is a cue sport which originated among British Army officers in Etawah,

India in the later half of the 19th century. It is played on a rectangular table
covered with a green cloth, or baize, with pockets at each of the four corners and
in the middle of each long side. Using a cue and 22 coloured balls, players must
strike the white ball (or "cue ball") to pot the remaining balls in the correct
sequence, accumulating points for each pot. An individual game, or frame, is won
by the player who scores the most points. A match is won when a player wins a
predetermined number of frames

The origin of snooker dates back to the latter half of the 19th century.[6] In the
1870s, billiards was a popular activity amongst British Army officers stationed in
India and several variations of the game were devised during this time. One such
variation originated at the officers' mess of the 11th Devonshire Regiment in
1875, which combined the rules of two pocket billiards games, pyramid and life
pool. The former was played with fifteen red balls and one black positioned in a
triangle, while the latter involved the potting of designated coloured balls.

The game developed its own identity in 1884 when its first set of rules was
finalised by Sir Neville Chamberlain, an English officer who helped develop and
popularise the game at Stone House in Ooty on a table built by Burroughes &
Watts that was brought over by boat. The word "snooker" was a slang term for
first-year cadets and inexperienced military personnel, but Chamberlain would
often use it to describe the inept performance of one of his fellow officers at the
table. The name instantly stuck with the players. In 1887, snooker was given its
first definite reference in England in a copy of Sporting Life which caused a
growth in popularity. Chamberlain came out as the game's inventor in a letter to
The Field published on 19 March 1938, 63 years after the fact.

The objective of the game is to score more points than one's opponent by potting
object balls in the correct order. At the start of a frame, the balls are positioned as
shown, and the players then take turns to hit shots by striking the cue ball with
the tip of the cue, their aim being to pot one of the red balls into a pocket and
thereby score a point, or, if this is not possible, to at least hit a red ball so as to
avoid making a foul shot. If the striker pots a red ball, he or she must then pot
one of the six "colours" (in snooker, the term colour is understood to exclude the
red balls). If the player successfully pots a colour, the value of that ball is added
to the player's score, and the ball is returned to its starting position on the table.
After that, the player must pot another red ball, then another colour, and so on.
This process continues until the striker fails to pot the desired ball, at which point
the opponent comes to the table to play the next shot.
The game continues in this manner until all the reds are potted and only the six
colours are left on the table. At this point the colours must be potted in the order
from least to most valuable ball – that is, yellow first (two points), then green
(three points), brown (four points), blue (five points), pink (six points) and finally
black (seven points), the balls not being returned to play. When the final ball is
potted, the player with more points wins