THE inaugural Snoopool Club Trophy was won by Bude’s Richard Lloyd at Crackington Snooker Club on Wednesday, January 9.

Snoopool is the brainchild of Jacobstow businessman Lenios Demetriou and it effectively combines the sports of snooker and pool and is played only on a snooker table, has its own set of rules and two special Snoopool balls — amethyst and graphite — to make up the required seven colour balls.

The objective of the game is for a player to pot all their chosen balls (seven colours or seven reds) in any order and successfully pot the black ball into any pocket with the white cue ball remaining on the table.

With a £300 first prize, there was great interest for the event with 16 players signing up for the chance to become the first ever first winner.

Held over two nights (Tuesday, January 8, and Wednesday, January 9), Tuesday saw the participants whittled down to eight.

On Wednesday, the quarter finals and semi-finals were held before Lloyd — a snooker player — took on Bude’s Paul Martin, who specialises in pool.

In a close contest, Lloyd ran out as a 2-0 winner to ensure he’ll compete in the Snoopool Champions Trophy to be held once all the remaining Club Trophy competitions have been held.

Reflecting on the event, Lenios said: “What a fantastic first ever Snoopool final with a snooker player Richard Lloyd against a pool player in Paul Martin. I could not have wished for a better final as the name Snoopool suggests.

“I’d like to thank all the players that entered and took part in this competition. Without them we would not have had one.

“We were very excited to also have Snoopool’s first ever female contestant Stephanie Devoy and everyone played some amazing games! It was fun, exciting and brilliant to see how they embraced and interpreted this new game so quickly and created their own styles of play and produced some wonderful frames!

“We were also donating the £20 ‘Total Clearance Break’ award to Cornwall Air Ambulance. But as this wasn’t won, two other players requested that we donate their £10 quarter-finalist loser prizes to the same charity, which we were very happy to do.

“I’d also like to thank the people that came to watch the competition, thank you for creating the atmosphere and making it very special. Special thanks go to Andy Hicks (past World Snooker Championship semi-finalist) who took the time to come and make the draw for the semi-finals along with Crackington chairman Barry Bird and stayed until the very end to watch the presentation of the trophy to the winner.

“Last but not least I’d like to thank Barry (chairman) for being such a brilliant referee and Crackington Snooker Club and all the committee for all their kind help in helping us organise this event. I cannot thank you all enough, you are a wonderful team of people and did everything possible to make sure this event went smoothly and successfully. We feel very proud to have had our first ever tournament in this very special club where Snoopool was developed. We look forward to coming back here for another tournament in the future and also organising a Snoopool league competition here.

“We now look forward to taking the Snoopool Club Trophy up and down the country for it’s next 15 tournaments followed by the Snoopool Champions Trophy. Richard Lloyd as winner of the Club Trophy has automatically qualified!”

Richard didn’t drop a single frame throughout the tournament, winning eight frames without reply in his four outings.

In Richard’s speech after the presentation, he said: “Everybody really enjoyed it on both nights and thank you Lenios for doing a great job.”

Speaking to the Post afterwards, Richard admitted to having initial reservations.

He said: “It was very good, I was out practicing the week before and in all honestly I was a bit sceptical with Lenios’ idea.

“But it was great, I knew half the players there and we all enjoyed ourselves.

“The way Lenios is pushing this, and he is very good at that, it could gain some real traction.”

As a snooker player himself, Richard felt Snoopool evened up the contest.

“It’s a bit different to snooker although it might almost favour the snooker player. But it does give more of a level playing field.

“That’s one of the reasons I think everyone there enjoyed it so much, because everyone had a chance in each game.”

Richard is keen to carry on playing, saying: “I’ll be playing a bit of both, one chap at our local snooker club looked into buying a couple more balls, so that we could have a few games back at our club.”

To find out more about Snoopool and how to play and to see the results in full, search ‘Snoopool’ on Facebook.