Bizarre Snooker Dump Shot ‘Secret’ Is Blowing The Minds Of Players And Fans

A bizarre fact about a popular snooker shot is blowing the minds of top professional players and fans following a demonstration by Jimmy White.

Snooker's 'dump shot' is a type of safety that leaves the object ball tight against the cushion, while the white ball travels back up to the other end of the table.

It's perfectly simple to play if the shot isn't straight-on - but if it is, then it's actually impossible. Because the white ball and object ball will ALWAYS collide after coming off the cushion. No matter what you do.

"This is incredible," says presenter Andy Goldstein as White demonstrates. "Apparently, if the shot is completely straight and you try and play a dump shot, in the time it takes for the red ball to his the top cushion and the white ball to hit the side cushion, no matter how you play this, they will collide."

The pace you play the shot - rapid or slow - won't make any difference. A second collision will always happen.

"That can sometimes cost players the frame when they do it," says a baffled Goldstein, while White attempts the shot several times - always with the same outcome.

While 'The Whirlwind' White - a six-time World Championship runner-up - confirms that he's always been aware that this shot is basically impossible, plenty of top players do not.

Goldstein reveals that one of the world's best players, 38-year-old Neil Robertson, didn't actually know this fact until earlier this year.

"How many years I've watched snooker and didn't know that!" replied one snooker fan on Twitter. "How many times do we do this?" commented another amateur player.

Someone has even kindly explained the phenomenon with a diagram. But says that working out why it occurs "requires understanding of conservation of momentum, modulus, vectors, and trigonometry."

Well, that rules us out altogether then. Still, a crucial piece of info for the next time you're unleashing your inner Mark Selby and playing safe at your local snooker hall.

Featured image credit: Twitter/Eurosport

Topics: snooker

Alex Reid

Alex Reid is a writer at SPORTbible who’s previously strung words together for FourFourTwo, Boxing News, The Guardian and, yes, Cruise International (it’s about big ships, not Tom). Interests range from football and boxing to real sports like WWE and darts. He is not a cage fighter.

@otheralexreid