Snooker Fouls and Penalties: Every Foul and Its Points
Snooker fouls and penalties under the WPBSA rules used in England: what counts as a foul, how the four to seven points are set and what follows.
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished Snooker Rules26 min read
- Minimum penalty
- 4 points
- Maximum penalty
- 7 points
- Taken off the offender
- 0 points
- Penalty values set by
- Section 3 Rule 11
A shirt cuff is enough. A player stretching across the table at the Crucible brushes a red with a sleeve, the referee says "foul, four", and four points appear on the other side of the scoreboard. That is the whole transaction as the WPBSA's official rules define it, and the same rules govern every club and league table in England.
The penalty for a foul in snooker is a minimum of four points, awarded to the opponent. It rises to five, six or seven when the ball on, or the ball wrongly struck or pocketed, is the blue, pink or black, and a short list of offences costs seven whatever balls are involved. Seven is the ceiling. Nothing is taken off the offender's own score. A foul ends the turn, cancels any points from that stroke and hands the opponent a choice about who plays next.
Four to seven, added to the other side: snooker foul points in outline
Section 3 Rule 11 of the rule book is headed "Penalty Values", and its opening sentence does most of the work: the listed acts are fouls "and incur four penalty points unless higher penalty points are indicated". Twenty-nine acts follow, sorted into four classes according to how the higher figure is reached.
- 4Minimum points to the opponent
- 7Maximum points to the opponent
- 0Points taken off the offender
- 6Offences that always cost seven
From Section 3 Rule 11 of the WPBSA rules. The count of fixed seven-point offences is for the striker; the non-striker has a short list of their own.
The scale tracks the value of the balls. A red is worth one, a yellow two, a green three and a brown four, and a foul involving any of them costs the flat minimum. Above the brown, the penalty equals the ball: five for the blue, six for the pink, seven for the black. The values themselves, and the order the balls are potted in, are laid out in our guide to what every colour is worth.
That the points are added and not deducted sounds like a bookkeeping preference. It has consequences. A player's own total can only rise during a frame, so a break of 60 followed by a foul is still a break of 60 on the scoresheet. In competitions decided on aggregate points across several frames, which the rules still provide for, a foul inflates the opponent's total without shrinking the offender's. And the language of the club follows the arithmetic: nobody in an English snooker hall says "minus four". They say "four away".
Why four? The rule book does not explain itself, but the logic is not hard to reconstruct. If a foul on a red cost one point, a player in a difficult position would foul deliberately and think it cheap. Four is half the value of a red and black together. It turns every failed escape into a real loss.
One distinction in terminology runs through what follows. The book reserves "foul" for an infringement that ends the offender's turn and uses "penalty" for one that does not. Nearly everything on this page is a foul in that strict sense. The exception has a section of its own further down.
The everyday fouls and what each one gives away
Four kinds of foul account for the great majority of those called in any frame, professional or amateur. None of them involves bad behaviour. They are the ordinary price of a difficult shot going wrong.
The cue ball hits nothing. A player escaping from a snooker sends the white off two cushions and it runs past every red. The penalty is the value of the ball on, so four in this case. Had the player been on the pink in the closing sequence of colours, it would have been six.
The cue ball hits the wrong ball first. The first impact must be on a ball that is on. Catching a colour when a red is required, or a red when a colour has been nominated, is a foul valued at whichever is higher, the ball on or the ball struck.
The cue ball goes into a pocket. British players call this going in-off, a term borrowed from billiards, where it scores. In snooker it costs the value of the ball on. It makes no difference that the white struck the correct ball first, or even that the object ball was potted on the same stroke. A red that goes in followed by the white is a foul, four away, no point for the red.
A ball that was not on goes into a pocket. With a red on, a colour drops. With the black nominated, a red is knocked in by the cue ball after contact. The penalty is the higher of the ball on and the ball pocketed.
| Situation | Ball on | What went wrong | Points to the opponent |
|---|---|---|---|
| Escape from a snooker runs past every ball | Red | No contact | 4 |
| Thin cut catches the pink before the red | Red | Wrong ball first | 6 |
| Cue ball follows the blue into a middle pocket | Blue | In-off | 5 |
| Red potted, black cannoned into a corner pocket | Red | Ball not on pocketed | 7 |
| Cue ball strikes the yellow and brown together | Yellow | Two balls hit at once | 4 |
| Cue ball misses the green and hits the black | Green | Wrong ball first | 7 |
The fifth row needs a word. The first impact of the cue ball may land on two balls at the same instant only if both are reds, or if one is a free ball and the other a ball on. Any other simultaneous hit is a foul. Referees judge it by eye, and it is among the hardest calls they have to make.
What is not a foul
Snooker asks less of a stroke than pool does. Provided the cue ball reaches a ball on first, nothing further has to happen. No ball needs to touch a cushion afterwards, so a player may roll the white gently up to a red and leave it there. This is the basis of a good deal of safety play, and newcomers arriving from pool often assume it is illegal.
The Snooker Shoot Out is the exception. Its separate competition rules require a ball to strike a cushion or enter a pocket on every stroke, and they change the remedies after a foul as well. Our guide to the Shoot Out's shot clock and fouls covers that format.
How the points for a snooker foul are worked out
The phrase "ball on or ball concerned, whichever is higher" appears in the rule book as though it settled everything. It covers one class of foul out of four.
| Class in Rule 11 | How the penalty is set | Offences in the class |
|---|---|---|
| (a) | Value of the ball on | Missing every ball, in-off, a double hit, a jump shot, both feet off the floor, playing wrongly from the D |
| (b) | Ball on or ball concerned, whichever is higher | Wrong ball first, a ball not on pocketed, a push stroke, touching a ball, a ball forced off the table |
| (c) | Ball on or the higher of the two balls struck | Hitting two balls simultaneously |
| (d) | Seven points, fixed | Reds in successive strokes, measuring a gap, failing to declare, and three others |
In every class the four-point floor applies.
The classes follow a plain logic. In class (a) no second ball is involved in the offence, so there is nothing to compare the ball on with. A cue ball that misses everything has not "concerned" any ball. In class (b) a particular ball has been wrongly hit, moved or pocketed, and its value enters the calculation. Class (c) is a special case of the same idea with two candidate balls. Class (d) abandons the comparison altogether.
A useful way to hold the rule in mind: a foul can never cost less than the ball on. Whatever else happened, that value is the starting point, and other balls can only push the figure up.
Several fouls in one stroke
The rules are short on this. "If more than one foul is committed in the same stroke, the highest value penalty shall be incurred." Penalties are not added together.
Picture a player on a red who mis-hits badly. The cue ball strikes the blue first, which is a five-point foul. The blue cannons into the black and sends it into a corner pocket, a seven-point foul. The cue ball then drops into a middle pocket, a four-point foul. The opponent receives seven. Not sixteen.
The single-highest principle applies within one stroke only. When a player is put back in after a foul and a miss and fails again, that is a new stroke with a new penalty, and a run of failed escapes at four points each mounts up quickly. This is how a snooker laid with one red left can be worth twenty points or more to the player who laid it.
Hands, sleeves, rests and feet: fouls with no misjudged shot
Some fouls have nothing to do with where the cue ball was aimed.
The broadest is touching a ball. The rule covers contact with a ball in play by "any part of the player's person, attire or equipment". A sleeve, a tie, a waistcoat button, a cube of chalk slipping from a pocket, the head of the rest, the butt of the cue swinging round as the player stands up: each is a foul, valued at the ball on or the ball touched, whichever is higher. The same applies to the small marker a referee puts down when a ball is lifted for cleaning. Touch the marker and the penalty is as if the ball itself had been touched.
Contact between the cue tip and the cue ball during the address falls under this heading too. The little preparatory movements before a stroke are not themselves a stroke, so a tip that nudges the white while feathering has not played a shot. It has touched a ball. When a player fouls a ball before striking in this way, the opponent gains an option beyond the usual pair: the balls can be put back and the offender made to play from the original position.
Things left on the table
It is the striker's job to clear the table of anything brought to it. If a ball in play runs into chalk left on the bed, or into a rest not yet lifted clear, the striker has fouled, even if the object was left there on an earlier visit.
Rests produce one of the more humane clauses in the book. A player is responsible for equipment they bring to the table themselves. Equipment "normally found at the table" and supplied by someone else, such as the club's rest or the referee's, is a different matter. If it proves faulty and causes a ball to be touched, as when the head of an old rest works loose, no foul is called. The referee puts the balls back and a player on a break carries on.
Feet, timing and the double hit
Some part of one foot must be on the floor at the moment of striking. The rule words it the other way round, penalising a stroke made "when both feet are off the floor", so a toe on the carpet is sufficient and players stretched along the cushion rail can be seen feeling for it. The rule book notes that this cannot be applied to players in wheelchairs.
A stroke must not be played while any ball is still moving, nor before the referee has finished replacing a colour. Players in the rhythm of a break occasionally get ahead of the referee, and when it happens the rule adds that the value of that colour is not scored.
Striking the cue ball more than once in a stroke is a foul at the value of the ball on. It tends to happen when the white and the object ball are very close together and the tip catches the cue ball a second time as it rebounds. Its near relation, the push stroke, is defined separately and has an exception for balls that are almost touching; our guide to what counts as a push explains the test. When the balls are actually in contact a different rule takes over, set out in our guide to the touching ball.
Two rarities complete the list: playing with a cue that is not of the traditional shape, and playing from in-hand with the cue ball outside the D.
The jump shot: a foul in snooker, with three narrow exceptions
Anyone who has watched American pool will have seen a player strike down on the cue ball to make it hop over a blocker. In snooker that stroke is a foul.
The definition is exact. A jump shot is made "when the cue-ball passes over any part of an object ball, whether hitting it in the process or not". Any part: clearing the edge of a ball counts. And contact on the way over does not rescue the stroke. The penalty falls in class (a), the value of the ball on.
The exceptions exist because a cue ball leaves the bed of the table more often than spectators realise. Any forceful stroke lifts it slightly, and after a hard collision it can bounce.
The first exception covers a cue ball that hits one object ball and then jumps over a different one. Once a lawful first contact has been made, what the white does in the air afterwards is not the rule's concern.
The second covers a cue ball that is airborne when it strikes an object ball but is not on the far side of that ball when it lands. A powerful shot that reaches the object ball on the full, a few millimetres up, is therefore fair. A shot that clips the top of the ball and lands beyond it is not.
The third covers a cue ball that has lawfully struck an object ball, gone on to hit a cushion or another ball, and then hopped back over the ball it first hit.
Each exception excludes a touching ball. A player cannot dig down on the white to lift it over a ball it is resting against.
What all three leave untouched is the case the rule is aimed at: a ball lying between the cue ball and its target, and a stroke that clears it. That is always a foul.
The ban is correct for this game, and the reason is in the name. Hiding the cue ball behind a ball that is not on is the central defensive tactic of snooker and the only way back for a player who needs penalty points. If a snooker could be escaped by jumping, it would be worth very little, and the long tactical exchanges that separate the game from its relatives would have no purpose. Pool can allow the jump because its tactics rest on other things. The wider comparison is in our guide to how snooker and pool differ.
Balls forced off the table
A ball struck too hard near a cushion can climb the rubber and leave the playing surface. The rule book's definition, rewritten in July 2021, is that a ball is forced off the table "if it comes to rest other than on the playing area or in a pocket".
The words "comes to rest" matter. A ball that mounts the cushion rail, runs along the wood and drops back onto the cloth has not been forced off the table. It was only ever in transit. A ball that ends up on the floor, or sitting on top of the rail, has.
The penalty is in class (b): the ball on or the ball that left the table, whichever is higher, with the usual floor.
| Ball that left the table | Penalty | What happens to the ball |
|---|---|---|
| Cue ball | Value of the ball on, minimum four | Played from in-hand, anywhere in the D |
| Red | Four, or the value of the ball on if higher | Stays off the table for the rest of the frame |
| Yellow, green or brown | Four, or the value of the ball on if higher | Returned to its own spot |
| Blue | Five, or more if the pink or black was on | Returned to its own spot |
| Pink | Six, or seven if the black was on | Returned to its own spot |
| Black | Seven | Returned to its own spot |
A red on the floor is gone for good, which takes eight points out of the frame for both players. The rules accept that an offender may sometimes gain from this, and say so in terms: reds are not replaced "regardless of the fact that a player may thus benefit from a foul".
When it is the cue ball that has left the table, the next player has it in-hand. It may be placed anywhere on or within the lines of the D and played in any direction, including back towards the baulk cushion. There is no requirement to play up the table, as there is in English billiards. Our guide to playing from the D deals with the placement rules and the fouls that can be committed while the white is in the hand.
The 2021 rewrite removed an oddity. Under the old wording a ball picked up by the striker was treated as forced off the table. That case now belongs to a separate rule on balls intentionally moved, which gives the opponent the option of having every ball restored to its place.
The automatic seven-pointers
Six offences by the striker cost seven points whether the ball on is a red or the black.
| Offence | What it looks like at the table |
|---|---|
| Using a ball off the table for any purpose | Taking a potted red out of a pocket to test whether a ball would pass through a gap |
| Using any object to measure gaps or distance | Laying chalk or the rest between two balls to gauge the space |
| Playing at reds in successive strokes | Potting a red and then striking another red instead of a colour |
| Using a ball other than the white as the cue ball | Striking a colour with the tip of the cue as though it were the white |
| Failing to declare when the referee asks | Giving no answer when asked which colour is being played |
| Fouling before nominating a colour | Brushing a ball with a sleeve after potting a red, before any colour is indicated |
They fall into two groups, and seeing the groups explains the number.
In the third, fifth and sixth rows the striker has typically just potted a red and is entitled to a colour, but no particular colour has been established as the ball on. The ordinary formula needs a ball on to work from. Lacking one, the rules assume the most valuable colour available, which is the black. Seven is simply the answer the usual calculation gives when the unknown is resolved against the offender. The third row extends to a free ball nominated as a red and followed by a real red.
The other three rows are different in kind. Measuring a gap with an object, or with a ball taken from a pocket, replaces judgement with certainty, and judgement of whether a ball will pass is part of the skill being tested. Striking a ball other than the white is an error so basic that no comparison of ball values could describe it. The rules mark all of these with the maximum.
Players judge gaps by eye, and that is entirely within the rules. Where looking ends and measuring begins is for the referee to decide.
What the next player can do after a foul
The points are the smaller part of the cost. What usually hurts more is that the offender loses control of what happens next.
- The callThe referee says "foul" at once and announces the penalty when every ball has stopped.
- The pointsFour to seven are added to the non-offender's score. Any ball pocketed on the stroke scores nothing.
- The ballsColours that left the table go back on their spots. Reds stay off. A pocketed cue ball becomes in-hand.
- The free ball checkIf the incoming player is snookered on every ball on, the referee calls a free ball.
- The choiceThe incoming player plays, or tells the offender to play again. After a foul and a miss, the balls can be replaced first.
The sequence in Section 3 Rules 10, 12, 13 and 14 of the WPBSA rules for the standard game. The Shoot Out uses different remedies.
The incoming player's options, taken one at a time:
Play from where the balls lie. The default. If the foul has left a pot available, the player takes it.
Make the offender play again. The rule is blunt: the player who fouled "has to play the next stroke if requested by the next player". This is the answer to a foul that leaves nothing on. If the cue ball has finished tight on the baulk cushion with every red safe, the incoming player need not take on a difficult shot. The offender is sent back to play from the mess they made. A request to play again cannot be withdrawn once made, though the offender put back in is free to choose any stroke and scores for anything potted.
Take a free ball. If the foul has left the incoming player snookered, the referee calls a free ball, and any ball may be nominated to stand in for the ball on. The option disappears if the offender is asked to play again instead. Our guide to how the free ball works has the conditions.
Have the balls replaced. Where the referee has added "and a miss" to the call, judging that the offender did not make a good enough attempt to hit the ball on, the incoming player may have every ball returned to its position before the stroke and require the offender to try again. The same restoring option exists when a ball was fouled before the stroke was played. The miss rule has complications enough for a page of its own, and they are in our guide to the foul and a miss.
If the cue ball is in-hand after the foul, both of the first two options are played from the D.
What a foul ends, and what happens to the balls that went in
A break stops at a foul but does not disappear. The rule book puts both halves in one sentence: all points scored in a break before a foul is awarded count, but the striker scores nothing for any ball pocketed in the foul stroke.
So a player who has made 45 and then goes in-off while potting a red finishes with a break of 45. The red does not make it 46.
Nor does a break resume. An offender who is told to play again starts a fresh turn, and anything potted from there is counted as a new break beginning at nought.
That red, though, stays in the pocket. Here the rule book's vocabulary earns its keep. A ball that enters a pocket lawfully has been potted; one that enters on a foul stroke has been pocketed. The two are treated differently for scoring and identically for the reds: either way a red is off the table for good. A colour pocketed on a foul goes back on its spot before the next stroke.
The turn itself ends, in the book's wording, when the foul has been committed, the balls have come to rest and the referee is satisfied that the striker has left the table. The last condition closes a loophole. A player who fouls and then, still at the table, commits a further infringement while walking away is penalised for that too.
At the very end of a frame a foul carries more than points. With only the black remaining, the first pot or foul ends the frame. A player who fouls on the final black gives away seven and the frame is over at that moment; if those seven points happen to level the scores, the black is re-spotted and played for again. On a re-spotted black, any foul loses the frame outright.
There is a limit to what a foul on the black can rescue. A player more than seven behind with only the black on the table cannot be saved by the opponent's error, and the rules let the leader claim the frame without playing on.
How fouls fit into the whole sequence of a frame, from the break-off onwards, is covered in our guide to the rules of snooker from first shot to last.
When the seated player offends: the separate call of "penalty"
Not every infringement is committed by the player at the table.
The rules provide for a non-striker who "comes to the table, out of turn, and commits any infringement". The classic case is a player who believes the opponent's break has ended, stands up, and touches a ball that is still in play. The referee calls "penalty", not "foul". Points are awarded to the striker, calculated as the ball on or the ball concerned with a four-point minimum. Any ball that was moved is put back. And the striker's turn "will continue unaffected".
That last part is the reason for the separate word. A foul, by definition, ends the offender's turn, and the non-striker has no turn to end.
Two fixed seven-point penalties sit alongside. One mirrors the striker's rule: a non-striker who uses a ball off the table for any purpose, or any object to measure with, gives away seven. The other concerns what the rules call a consultation period, the interval in which both players may help the referee put balls back after a miss or a disturbance. An amendment effective from August 2024 pinned down when that period starts and ends. Any player who touches a ball on the table during it, with hand, clothing or cue, is penalised seven.
In a club the non-striker is also the referee, re-spotting colours and retrieving balls, and the opportunities for an accidental brush are greater than on television. Most players wave such things through between friends. A league match is another matter, and it is as well to know that the rule exists.
Doubles adds a twist. In four-handed snooker a partner is not a bystander: if the striker's partner commits an infringement, the striker is treated as the offender, and it is a foul in the full sense. Playing out of turn in a doubles frame is a foul at the value of the ball on, and the offender's partner then loses a turn, whether or not the opponents ask for the stroke to be played again. Partners may talk between visits. They may not confer once one of them has approached the table as striker.
Fouls that nobody called
One sentence in Rule 10 decides a surprising number of arguments. If a foul or a penalty "is neither awarded by the referee, nor successfully claimed by the non-striker before the next stroke is made, it is condoned".
Condoned means gone. Once the next stroke has been played there is no going back to an earlier one, however clear the replay. The words "or a penalty" were added in July 2021 to bring non-striker infringements under the same time limit.
The referee's part in this is carefully drawn. A referee must intervene on seeing any infringement. A referee must not, however, give "any indication that a player is about to commit an infringement". If a player is lining up the wrong ball, the official says nothing until it has been struck. Where the referee did not see an incident, the rules allow the marker, other officials and even spectators who were well placed to be consulted, along with a video recording if one is available.
The non-striker may claim a foul the referee missed, and a player who leaves the arena during a long break may appoint a deputy to watch and claim on their behalf, provided the referee is told beforehand.
Then there is the convention, which is stronger than any of this. Players declare their own fouls. A second contact on the cue ball that made no sound, a feather that moved the white by the width of a hair: these are things only the striker can know, and at every level of the British game the expectation is that the striker says so. Professionals have called fouls on themselves that no camera angle could have shown. The rules do not require it in so many words. The culture of the game does, and a player known to have kept quiet would find it remembered.
The score is handled in the same spirit. Section 4 makes both players responsible, alongside the referee, for seeing that the right score is shown, and a player who notices an error is expected to say so at the earliest opportunity, whichever way it runs.
The officials' side of all this, including what a referee may and may not tell a player who asks, is described in our guide to the snooker referee's duties.
Penalties beyond points: warnings, frames and matches
Section 4 of the rules deals with conduct, and its penalties are measured in frames.
- First instanceThe referee warns the player that any further unsporting conduct will cost a frame.
- Second instanceThe frame is awarded to the opponent, or the next frame if the conduct occurs between frames, with a warning that the game is now at stake.
- Third instanceThe referee awards the game to the opponent.
- Serious conductThe referee may award a frame or the game at once, without any earlier warning.
- No appealA decision to award a frame or the game is final.
The sequence in Section 4 Rule 1 of the WPBSA rules. "Game" is the rule book's word for the full contest of frames that the public calls a match.
Unsporting conduct is defined broadly. It includes offensive language or gestures, refusing to continue a frame, and anything the referee considers "wilfully or persistently" unsporting.
Time wasting has a ladder of its own. A player who takes "an abnormal amount of time" over a stroke or its selection is warned. A second instance costs a frame. Every further instance costs another. The rules set no number of seconds, leaving the standard game without a shot clock and the judgement with the referee.
Three further provisions connect conduct to the foul rules.
A frame may be awarded for repeated misses. When a player has a clear, full-ball path to a ball on and fails to hit it twice from the same replaced position, the referee warns that a third failure will give the frame to the opponent.
A player may not concede a frame unless one of the players needs penalty points to win. Giving up while the balls on the table could still produce a win is treated as unsporting conduct.
And a player may not manufacture that situation. Committing a foul on purpose so that penalty points become necessary, as a way of making a concession lawful, is itself unsporting conduct under a clause added in 2022.
When a game is forfeited, the offender loses the frame in progress and as many unplayed frames as the opponent needs to complete the win. The best-known case in the British game of unplayed frames going onto a scoreline came at the 2006 UK Championship in York, and it arose from a walk-out, not from a referee's award: Ronnie O'Sullivan, trailing Stephen Hendry 4-1 in a best-of-17 quarter-final, conceded the match during the sixth frame and left the arena. The result was recorded as 9-1.
Fines and suspensions are a separate matter. They are imposed by the WPBSA through its disciplinary process under the rules that bind its members, not by the referee under the rules of the game, and they fall outside this page. Guides to the rules and disciplinary systems of other sports are collected on our England hub.