One of the most exciting and thrilling events on the snooker calendar, the World Snooker Tour (WST) BetVictor Snooker Shoot Out is, in some ways, more challenging to bet on than any other event in snooker. Check out our full betting guide on this nail-biting tournament below.
- Best Bookies for The Snooker Shoot Out – Top 5 Ranked & Reviewed
- Tournament Structure for the Snooker Shoot Out
- Snooker Shoot Out Betting 2023 Odds, Promotions, Tips & Predictions
- 5 Reasons To Bet on the Snooker Shoot Out
- Snooker Shoot Out Betting Sites With Livestreaming
- Popular Snooker Shoot Out Betting Markets
- History of the Snooker Shoot Out
- Recent Snooker Shoot Out Winners
- Snooker Shoot Out Key Stats
- More Snooker Tournaments
- ThePuntersPage Final Say
- Snooker Shoot Out Betting FAQs
Best Bookies for The Snooker Shoot Out – Top 5 Ranked & Reviewed
Bet £10 get £40 18+ New customers only. Opt in, bet £10 on any football market at minimum 1/1 odds. No cash out. Get £40 in Free Bets on selected events. Free Bets expire in 7 days. Debit card / Apple Pay payments only. Full T&Cs apply. Bet Responsibly. BeGambleAware.org #ad
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Bet £5 get £20 18+ New UK+ ROI Customers only. Deposit & Bet min £5 as first bet at minimum odds 1/2 to qualify for 1x £20 Free Bet. Certain deposit methods and bet types excluded. Free bet valid for 7 days, stake not returned. Restrictions apply. Full T&Cs apply. Bet Responsibly. BeGambleAware.org #ad
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Bet £10 Get £30 18+. Min deposit requirement. Free Bets are paid as Bet Credits and are available for use upon settlement of qualifying bets. Min odds, bet and payment method exclusions apply. Returns exclude Bet Credits stake. Time limits and Full T&Cs apply. Bet Responsibly. BeGambleAware.org #ad
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Bet £10 get £30 18+. New customers using Promo code R30 only. Min £10 stake, min odds ½, free bets paid as 3x £10, free bets credited after settlement of first qualifying bet, free bets will expire 30 days after the qualifying bet is placed, payment methods/player/country restrictions apply. Full T&Cs apply. Bet Responsibly. BeGambleAware.org #ad
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Bet £5 Get £20 in Free Bets 18+ New UK+IRE Customers only. Certain deposit methods & bet types excl. Min first 5 bet within 14 days of account reg at min odds 1/2 = 4x 5 free bets. Free bets valid for 7 days, stake not returned. No cashout, restrictions + Full T&Cs apply. Bet Responsibly. BeGambleAware.org #ad
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Tournament Structure for the Snooker Shoot Out
The Snooker Shoot Out is an event in the BetVictor Snooker Series, beginning with 128 players all involved in an open draw. In order to win, contestants will need to win seven straight knockout matches. However, there is a twist to this tournament that makes it unlike any other on the World Snooker Tour.
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All matches are contested over a single frame, and all of these frames can only last a maximum of 10 minutes. Furthermore, the players are subjected to a shot clock when taking their shots. During the first five minutes of each match, the shot clock is set to 15 seconds for players to make their move, but in the final five minutes of a game, this is reduced to 10 seconds. Should players exceed the time limit, a minimum of five penalty points will be imposed on them.
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Unlike a traditional snooker tournament, players must hit a cushion or pot a ball on every shot – otherwise, it will be deemed a foul.
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Any fouls that are committed will reward the opposing player with the ball in hand. In order to determine which player makes the break, the players lag off. This involves them simultaneously shooting the ball down the table from the baulk line to the top cushion in order to rebound back down the table and finish as close as possible to the baulk cushion. The player who the match referee decides does this better will then break off.
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Should a Shoot Out match end in a tie, the players involved will undertake a blue ball shoot out. In this instance, the blue ball is placed on its regular spot on the table, and the players place the white ball wherever they like within the D in order to pot the blue ball. For those not in the know, the D is a semi-circle-shaped area on the table where the balls are placed at the beginning of a game, also known as the spotting area or baulk-line area. It is located at the top of the table, opposite the black ball spot.
Snooker Shoot Out Betting 2023 Odds, Promotions, Tips & Predictions
The 2023 Snooker Shoot Out is set to take place from the 25th to the 28th January at the Morningside Arena in Leicester, England.
Snooker Shoot Out 2023 Predictions
This is a tournament where the ranking sheet can go out of the window. No player who has won this event has been ranked inside the top 16 in the world rankings at the time of winning it. Generally, players who can think quickly, handle the pressure of the more involved crowd, and understand when to attack and when to defend do well here.
Due to the unpredictable nature of the tournament, with its unique format and rules, it will be hard to pick the outright winner. However, we expect one of these four players to take home the trophy.
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Mark Williams was the beaten finalist in 2022, but all he did in that final was break off and then watch Hossein Vafaei clear up with one of the breaks of the season given the circumstances. The Welshman was a semi-finalist the year before, so if there is such a thing as a Shootout specialist, then Williams might well fit the bill here. That is no surprise as he is a brilliant long potter, never freezes under pressure, and is clever enough to know when to attack and when to tie the table up a bit. He feels like an ideal candidate for the winner of this tournament.
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Martin Gould is former winner of this tournament, which comes as no surprise as much like Williams he is highly astute at long potting, and scores as well and as quickly as anyone when he is in the balls. He is another who knows how to protect a lead in a frame, but at the same time, he can handle the pressure of the important single-ball pots that can make such a difference. There have been signs of Gould coming back to form in the last few weeks, highlighted by his win over Ronnie O’Sullivan at the English Open, and with the know-how to win this tournament, the ‘Pinner Potter’ should go close again in 2023.
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Thepchaiya Un-Nooh is another previous winner of this tournament. The 2019 champion powered his way to the title that year and has already shown he is coming back to his best form this season when he made the semi-final of the Scottish Open, beating Mark Allen and Judd Trump to make the last four of that tournament. Un-Nooh is so well suited to this event you might be forgiven for thinking he drew the rules up. The shot clock will never come into play with him, and he is such a natural scorer that, if his long game is in good order, he will take a lot of stopping. His weakness is tactical, but natural safety play is less important in this format, so whenever this tournament comes around the Thai should always place high up on any punter's shortlist.
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Robert Milkins is another who sees the right shot quickly. The only surprise about Milkins in this tournament is that he hasn’t won it in the past, but he was a frame away from winning it at the first attempt when Nigel Bond got the better of him in the final in 2011. He was a quarter-finalist a couple of years ago, and for the first time in 2023 he will go to the Shootout with silverware in his cabinet, having won the Gibraltar Open in 2022. He has taken a lot of confidence from that win, and with him being a naturally quick player and a good scorer, he is another of those who is ideally suited to this unique format.
Snooker Shoot Out 2023 Odds
The odds for this tournament will be added shortly as the event draws closer.
Snooker Shoot Out Betting Promotions
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If you would like £30 in free bets to spend on the Snooker Shoot Out, then sign up to Coral and place a qualifying bet of £10.
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Alternatively, Betfair are offering up to £100 in free bets to new customers.
5 Reasons To Bet on the Snooker Shoot Out
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This is a completely unique event for snooker.
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Matches are played over a single
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frame.
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Each game can only last 10 minutes.
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Players are subjected to a stop clock.
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There is a £171,000 prize pool to shoot for.
Snooker Shoot Out Betting Sites With Livestreaming
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888sport
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bet365
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Paddy Power
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Ladbrokes
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Unibet
Popular Snooker Shoot Out Betting Markets
Snooker betting is already fun in itself, but when players only battle it out for one single frame, there is no room for errors.
Here are just some of the ways you can bet on the Snooker Shoot Out:
Outright Snooker Shoot Out Tournament Winner Betting
A bet on the outright tournament winner is simply to place a stake down on the name of the player who you believe will win the tournament outright. It’s a simple and also the most popular bet in snooker and for sports in general.Bettors can either make their own predictions or follow whatever top snooker Shoot Out betting tips they can find. Either way, this wager is no more complicated than simply picking a player to win the event and putting a little money behind their selection.
Match Winner Betting
With this bet, you merely aim to predict the winning player in a match that involves two players.There are only two possible outcomes in snooker, as games cannot end in a tie. For this event, the match winner will be the player to win the one frame.
147 Betting
A break of 147 in snooker is the maximum break a player can make. This is achieved by potting all 15 reds and following each pot by sinking a black before slotting home each colour in order, until the table has been cleared of balls entirely.While it sounds easy, it is in fact quite a rare accomplishment. That said, it does open up a whole new betting market for snooker fans to enjoy. You can bet on a 147 happening at any point during a tournament, and while you might not necessarily expect a 147 to happen, it is a possibility you might consider betting on.
History of the Snooker Shoot Out
From 1969 to 1986, the BBC broadcast an extremely popular snooker show and tournament called Pot Black, in which games were played over a single frame. This helped bring the game of snooker into the mainstream. Although it was briefly revived from 1991 to 1993 and again from 2005 to 2007, the show was really a victim of its own success, as the snooker boom saw longer format professional tournaments taking precedence with fans.
A tournament that resembled today’s Snooker Shoot Out was first held in 1990 in the month of September. Here, all matches except the final were decided over just one single frame. This event returned years later in 2011, when it was renamed to what it is known today – the Snooker Shoot Out.
When it was relaunched, the tournament had a one-frame shoot out format with a random draw and a top prize of £32,000. Back then, the top 64 players in the world rankings contested the tournament. The Circus Arena in the city of Blackpool was the host venue for the Snooker Shoot Out between 2011 and 2015, after which it was moved to the Hexagon in Reading.
Since 2017, the event has been sponsored by BetVictor. That same year, the tournament was officially made a ranking event. This saw the field increased to 128 players for the first time, which is still the field size today. The tourney was also moved to the Colosseum in Watford, as was the case with many Matchroom Sports events, such as darts.
The Shoot Out snooker tournament was staged at the Marshall Arena in Milton Keynes during the pandemic-affected 2020/21 season.
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The 2022 event was held at the Morningside Arena in Leicester for the first time.
It was won by the Iranian professional Hossein Vafaei, who beat Mark Williams in the final to win what was the first ranking event title of his career. His win means that nobody ranked in the top 16 player at the time the tournament was played has been a champion of this event. Vafaei also restricted his opponents to single-figure scores in four of the seven frames he won, meaning he was a dominant force throughout the 2022 tournament.
Recent Snooker Shoot Out Winners
| Year | Winner | Country |
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| 2022 | Hossein Vafaei | Iran |
| 2021 | Ryan Day | Wales |
| 2020 | Michael Holt | England |
| 2019 | Thepchaiya Un-Nooh | Thailand |
| 2018 | Michael Georgiou | Cyprus |
| 2017 | Anthony McGill | Scotland |
| 2016 | Robin Hull | Finland |
| 2015 | Michael White | Wales |
| 2014 | Dominic Dale | Wales |
| 2013 | Martin Gould | England |
| 2012 | Barry Hawkins | England |
Snooker Shoot Out Key Stats
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2020 champion Michael Holt is the tournament’s most successful ever player, having won 23 of his 32 matches in this event.
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Unlucky Paul Davison has competed in this event on seven occasions, but has never won a match.
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Finland’s Robin Hull holds the best winning percentage, having won 87.5% of his matches, which equates to seven wins in eight.
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Mark Allen shot the highest break in Shoot Out history when he opened with 142 in 2021.
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Legends of the game Alan McManus, Barry Pinches, Nigel Bond, Ken Doherty and Rod Lawler all took part in the inaugural staging of the tournament back in 1990. They all competed in the 2021 tournament too.
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Hossein Vafaei was the first player from Iran to win the tournament. This made him the third player in the history of the event to stop his opponent from scoring in the final. Martin Gould (2013) and Thepchaiya Un-Nooh (2019) were the other two.
Similar Tournaments To the Snooker Shoot Out
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8th – 15th January 2023, Snooker Masters: The second oldest WST event after the World Championships, the Masters is the first tourney of the year and takes place in early January each year.
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15th April – 2nd May 2023, Betfred World Championship: This is the snooker’s biggest event, and is played each May at Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre.
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13th – 20th February 2023, Welsh Open: Part of snooker’s Home Nations Series, the Welsh Open is played each year in February.
More Snooker Tournaments
ThePuntersPage Final Say
The Snooker Shoot Out event is an exciting tournament to watch because of its totally unique format. There is absolutely no room for error as games only last ten minutes, which might explain why shocks are common. Stellar names – such as World Champion Mark Selby, world number one Judd Trump and the greatest of all time Ronnie O’Sullivan – have all never won it. Such unpredictability is partly why Snooker Shoot Out betting at online bookmakers makes this event so much fun to bet on.
Snooker Shoot Out Betting FAQs
The 2023 Snooker BetVictor Shoot Out was broadcast on Eurosport in the United Kingdom. You can also watch it via the Discovery Plus App.
The Snooker Shoot Out, which is the second WST snooker tournament of the calendar year, takes place every January. The 2023 tournament begins on January 25 and finishes on January 28.
The prize pool for the Snooker Shoot Out in 2023 is £171,000.
In any other snooker tournament, you can. However, in this unique tournament, you can’t, because matches only last for one frame at a time.
The Snooker Shoot Out is played over matches of one frame. There are 127 matches in the tournament before the winner is decided.
128 players enter the tournament and play through a random draw to determine the champion. Each frame is 10 minutes long with a 15-second shot clock in the opening five minutes and 10 seconds for the latter five. A ball must hit the cushion on every shot; otherwise, a foul will be awarded to the other player.