Behind the Black: Tabletop Snooker on Three Numbers and a d20
20 September 2026
A frame is one roll each
Behind the Black is a tabletop snooker game. Every player is three numbers. Both men roll a d20, add their break-building, and the bigger total takes the frame.
The gap between the two rolls gives you the size of the break. Find the gap down the side of the matrix, your own raw die across the top, read the cell. A big win on a big die is a century.
The frames nobody remembers
Roll close and neither man's scoring settled it. Those go to a safety battle, both players rolling a d6 and adding their safety rating, and the better tactician takes it. Level again and it drops through to nerve.
Then there is the winning line. When one man is a single frame from the match, the tight frames skip safety and go straight to a nerve contest. You will watch it undo the same player three times in a season before you quite believe it.
Snookers required
Lose a frame narrowly and you do not have to shake hands. You can say you went for snookers instead.
How many you need comes off how badly you lost the frame. How hard each one is comes off your safety rating against his. Roll a d10 for each in turn: every success is a snooker laid and a failed escape, and the fouls are closing the gap. One miss and he got out clean and the frame stands.
One per match. Spend it three frames down to stay alive, or bank it for a decider you might never reach.
Five eras and a tour that never existed
The ratings sheet covers the seventies, the eighties, the class of ninety-two, the modern game and a cross-era all-time draw. Fifty-six players.
Then there is the Harcourt Circuit: thirty-two professionals across nine nations, eight named events at named venues, and a write-up of the two men who have shared the last four world titles, the one who might break it up, the crowd's favourite who makes the best break of every tournament he enters and wins none of them, and the veteran worth one more Harcourt before you roll his retirement.
Build your own and Book Two does it in six rolls a player, with name tables for thirteen countries, then ages them on at the end of every season, improving some, declining others, retiring the old ones and bringing new professionals through. Four or five seasons in, the field looks nothing like the one printed in the book.
When you want the result and not the match
Grade each man on one number, roll a d20 for who won and another for the scoreline, and a quarter-final is over in the time it takes to write the score down. Tables run from a best of seven up to a best of thirty-five, so you can get through a draw in an evening and play the semi-finals frame by frame.
Two browser files
The first plays a whole match with the dice animated, the break matrix and every other table on screen, and the row you just hit lit up. It takes your own dice if you would rather roll them on the table, and it will simulate up to a score you name, so you can join a long final at fifteen all and play the session that decides it.
The second builds the field. Type players in, roll them off Book Two's tables, or import a spreadsheet, then print the cards and export the ratings back into the match app.