Snooker is a much more difficult game than pool; people who are amazing at snooker are generally very good at pool, but a good pool player, if he's never played on a snooker table, would struggle. Tony Drago is one of a rare few who made it to snooker through pool; many snooker players have played on the pool circuit, though, with little success: Steve Davis, Ronnie O'Sullivan, Mark Williams.

Bridges differ from player to player; O'Sullivan plays with both hands and different bridges, Steven Hendry, six-times world champion, plays with an open bridge, Mark Williams, my favourite player, is very unorthodox in stance and bridging hand and cue action and shot selection and just about everything else, Steve Davis is very old-fashioned and who can blame him because he owned the eighties and is still going strong today, Paul Hunter, who passed away to cancer late last year, was a terrific, natural player who used a closed bridge to great, very consistent effect, John Higgins is overtly open bridged, with his little finger knuckle higher than all others - again, very unorthodox, but seemingly very solid.

It's a tough game which, at top level, is all about confidence and psychological endurance. As much about mental stamina as it is technical skill. Most of the ranking events - those which decide who is placed where in the seedings across a season - are best-of-nine matches, so it's a race to five frames, resulting in a lot of upsets. The big tournaments - UK Championship and World Championship (and the Masters, but that isn't a ranking tournament, it's invitation, with the top 16 and two wildcards thrown in) are longer matches. The World Championship final is best-of-35, for instance, and goes across four sessions over two days. The emphasis on lengthier bouts is intended to sort the chimps from the champs; basically, you can't win ten frames by luck. In order to cause an upset in a long match, you've got play at a consistently high standard throughout the match. You've got to maintain your mental stability and keep one hundred percent focus all of the time. There are so many twists and turns in the long matches, so many turning points which often come down to one missed ball or a rub of the green; I love it. It's the one sport I think where it's all about taking responsibility for your own chances. If you're at the table, you're in and the potential is in your hands. In tennis and darts and whatnot, you always get the chance to fire a ball back at someone playing well; but in snooker, if you're sitting in your seat, there's nothing you can do. It's very damaging to watch somebody clear a table and for you to just sit there not being able to do anything about it.

I'd happily give you a game, mate, but I'm not sure if you'd be up for it. It isn't readily available in the States, like you said, and I wouldn't consider myself a teacher at it. In fact I'm rather bad at it.

But why do I sense that your invitation into an unknown sport I happen to love was deliberately undermined by four words, three of which were the same: "Yeah yeah yeah - whatever".

And why do I also get the sense that those same four words could be a recurring motif to my questioning of you?

As expected, my points in the other posts still stand, waiting for answers, and met with befuddled silence...