Snooker practice apps are a good way of adding structure to your routines, and for tracking progress as you work on new skills.
Problem is… there aren’t many of them.
Most of the snooker apps we’ve tried are primitive at best. They have some basic functionality (digital scoreboards), and a few practice drills, but there’s a gap in the market for something better.
In this post we’ll take a look at the best of what’s currently on offer. These are the best snooker practice and training apps, compatible on iPhone or Android devices.
The Best Snooker Practice Apps for iOS and Android
We’ll start with the most sophisticated of the bunch:
Snooker Coach 147
Snooker Coach 147, by far the most ambitious of the training apps we’ve seen. (Available on iPhone or Android)
Snooker Coach 147 by Gerard McManus is a comprehensive log diary and practice assistant.
It is packed full of practice routines covering everything from break building to safety. As you tick off each routine, you can record your daily score and track progress over time. The app comes with a useful session organiser allowing you to plan out exactly what exercises you will cover in advance. Along with how much time you want to spend on them.
This training tool boasts an augmented reality (AR) viewer that projects each practice routine on to the table you’re playing on.
It’s a nice addition, but somewhat unnecessary.
Besides the training guides (each drill has some simple explanatory instructions), you’ve also got a digital score tracker that allows you to keep track of frames and breaks over time.
The real advantage of this app is the targeted session planner.
The exercises are nicely illustrated and the customisation allows you to make the app work to your needs. You can also journal your thoughts throughout; useful for working on the mental side of your game.
The free version of the app includes a small selection of practice drills. The full list of routines has to be unlocked with a paid upgrade.
Cuestars Snooker Academy
A Level 3 routine in the Cuestars Snooker Academy app
Available on Android.
This offering from the Cuestars Snooker Academy is available as an app, but it’s essentially just a repackaging of content from their website.
The lessons and practice drills are led by John Hunter, a World Snooker qualified coach.
The app has seven levels each providing a set of standard (Under 50 break players) and advanced (Over 50 break players) training drills. All aspects of the game are covered: break building, potting, safety, angles.
As you practice, you’ll be assigned a score for each drill. These numbers are then added together to give you an overall rating out of 1000.
The idea is to improve your rating over the course of the season, and hopefully improve your results on the match table too.
A solid selection of exercises and a good snooker companion resource.
My Snooker Stats
Track your performance, shot by shot, with My Snooker Stats
A simple app that skips the practice drills and focuses instead on providing a complete statistical breakdown of your performance in frames.
You can use My Snooker Stats as a simple digital scoreboard. It also allows you to track the outcome of each shot played over the course of a frame. Every shot is registered with a tap. The user is then asked to assign whether he has played safe or taken on a pot. Depending on the intention – and the result – the app tallies up your success rates. These include safety percentages, long pot success rate, potting success, as well as a ‘career’ record of highest breaks.
As you play more frames, the app will show you how your performance is trending over time across these key metrics.
The major downside is that tracking every shot in a game can be cumbersome, and you’ll need understanding playing partners.
Honest partners, too…
“Hey Derek, did you mean that safety or did you just get bloody lucky with the miss as usual?”
One of the nice touches with My Snooker Stats is the community leaderboard. You can chart your performance against other app users and make all kinds of comparisons:
- Highest breaks
- Consistency of breaks
- How often you score a 20/30/40/50/etc in a frame
- Frames won or lost
Of course, there’s no guarantee that the other players are recording their numbers by the book!
Snooker Score Counter
Along with stat tracking, you can follow basic drills in Snooker Score Counter
Available on Android.
Snooker Score Counter works along the same lines as My Snooker Stats with comprehensive frame tracking and a statistical analysis of your performance.
It also comes with a handful of practice drills (visually displayed with written instructions). By inputting your score for each routine, you can track performance over time and see where you’re getting better – or worse.
As far as snooker practice apps go, it doesn’t offer a huge amount of variety, but what’s there is solid.
Cue Measure
Available on iPhone.
Also released by Gerard McManus, the man behind Snooker Coach 147, this little known training app is one of the most ambitious we’ve seen.
Cue Measure makes use of the iPhone’s gyroscope to provide instant feedback on the consistency of your cue action.
It provides a score per shot (or per session) based on your cue delivery. Factors include: rotation of the wrist, left/right body movement, ability to get parallel to the table, smoothness of striking, and cueing direction. The idea is that by measuring unwanted physical movements, we can take rapid steps to correct them.
It’s the old mantra: what gets measured gets managed.
But there’s one slight problem…
For the app to work its magic, you must attach the iPhone to your cue.
That means busting out the Sellotape and playing with a chunky Apple device taped to your cue. Besides the obvious visual distraction, an iPhone adds weight that can mess with the balance of your cue action. Do you really want to practice in a way that fails to replicate the exact feel of a shot in a match?
We love the idea behind the app, but the execution limits its appeal.
What would be great, however, is a wearable device that attaches to the wrist, or a bluetooth band that can be placed on the butt of the cue.
Currently, there’s a lot to be gained from the insights that Cue Measure offers, but the way it delivers them leaves a bit to be desired.
Check Billiard
Well it doesn’t cover snooker, but if you’re in to American Pool…
Finally, we have a coaching app that… isn’t actually for snooker.
Check Billiard is aimed at American Pool players and comes with all the flamboyant promises that you’d expect from a game that boasts the Mosconi Cup as a showpiece attraction.
A “Personal Pool Instructor” offering a “quantum leap in billiard training methodology”…
Ohh yes.
All the bold promises are there, but under the surface lies a coaching app that delivers superb training for pool fans.
The app starts with a personal analysis of your playing capabilities where you’ll be asked to perform a number of drills. From there the training moves in to a number of skill-specific routines: e.g. speed, accuracy, impact quality, position play, follow shots. All that lovely pool terminology that so many of us raise our eyebrows at…
Where this coaching app excels is in the breadth of training videos. There are hundreds of them, each delivered by professional players to demonstrate the objective and provide commentary on how best to go about the task.
As you play along you’ll receive your personal scores and tailored individual ‘workouts’.
It’s all very American.
There’s a lot of bluster and psycho-ramble (Checky the Panda will let you know if he is ‘satisfied’ with your performance), but there’s also plenty of material to sink your teeth in to.
A worthy training app for those who like bucket pockets. 😉
What are your snooker practice apps of choice? Are there any we’ve missed from the list?
Let us know in the comments below.