LIFE IS LIKE A GAME OF SNOOKER

I am a natural-born DIY tinkerer, a “maker” and of course, I am also a software engineer. Throughout the years. I accumulated plenty of project ideas that are stored in my drawer, waiting for an opportunity to come to fruition. That opportunity was Pixellot.

I was one of Pixellot’s first 5 employees, starting pretty much at mid 2013.  

Since childhood, I have been in love with the game of snooker. It just so happens that across the street from our office, the Moshava stadium is located. Inside the facility, there is a cool snooker club. 

After work I used to join colleagues to play a few rounds. One friend who no longer works here remarked at the time: “you know if there was a snooker table at the office, I would work for free…” 

That thought got me thinking… 

First of all, it would be great if we got a snooker table to play with in the office. I thought; wouldn’t it be cool to have games filmed live that could be replayed on the screen just like watching snooker tournaments on Eurosport. The idea kept rolling around in my mind until I decided to spend some serious free time developing the concept. 

Since Pixellot is the world leader in automated video capture, we were already working with many of the technologies that would be needed. 

After many hours spent on the project, I got to a point where I felt that I actually had a potential product in hand. Although the company has grown quite a bit since I started working on this, management is always accessible here at Pixellot so I talked to a few senior people in management and told them that I’d like to show them a demo. 

I have to add that it was easy by this time to actually conduct a live demo since we managed to convince the company to shell out for a full-size snooker table. Now it was just a question of setting it up in-house to run my demo. 

The Waiting Game 

The response to my demo was very positive. They really liked the idea however, since the company was heavily involved in B2B projects, this was a bit off course from a business perspective, and I did not get a green light to continue developing the idea with company resources.  

I kept the idea on the back burner, refining the product from time to time, waiting for the right opportunity. I knew that to open my own startup and develop the needed technology from scratch would be very difficult and I was certain that under the right circumstances, developing it under the auspices of Pixellot would make the most sense. 

A fellow colleague at the office who’s a senior developer really liked the idea too and as a fellow snooker aficionado, he joined me in continuing to develop the product. 

Fieldwork 

We sat in a lot of clubs and watched players. What they do? What they argue about? What bothers them etc. Even when we watched snooker on TV, we looked at everything except the game itself. How many cameras, what type, where were they are placed, lighting, shooting angles, how Judges determine things, etc. this led to some unique features like the VAR (Video Assistant Referee) that lets you see how the balls were set before they were hit. We used all that input to continue refining the product. 

Breakthrough 

After being in development for three years, our break finally came. After focusing solely on the B2B market, Pixellot decided to start developing products for consumers. I felt that this B2C expansion of our product line opened an opportunity to once again present my project to management.  

Although the company has grown considerably, management remains open to initiatives from all of its personnel. So we set up a presentation of the latest version of ‘SnooCare’ (How do you like the name?). This time, they could see a fit with the company’s product strategy. We got a green light to move forward at the company’s expense and we got an initial budget. We started pushing the system and promoting it in an orderly fashion. 

Right on cue 

We started going to events and introduced our product. We began making connections, among them with the Israeli Association for Billiard Sports (ISPA). Eventually, we installed our first system at the ISPA’s main snooker club, in Ashdod. Our demo unit was used to air the Israeli Snooker Championship. 

People’s first reaction to SnooCare is that it’s a real TV-like experience. This is precisely what we aimed for, and hearing this kind of feedback from the audience was amazing. We knew the product was ready. We just needed to be at the right place at the right time! 

Where we stand today 

Snooker is to a large extent an old-fashioned industry and we believe that our solution can provide much needed innovation and set a new standard for the snooker industry. Once, when we were attending a big event of the European Snooker Championship, we noticed that the judges pasted the names of the players on paper and attached them to the scoreboard. This is still happening today and quite frankly, there is no reason why that should be the case in 2021.   

The system is currently in use by over 100 players. There is an app for iOS and Android, which can be used for scoring, to watch instant replays and control the game. We are working on collaborations with unions and clubs in Europe and want our system to be the standard for all snooker games in the world, especially those that are not broadcast today. 

You can visit the product page: https://snoocare.com 

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Tovi Levis is a Software Engineer at Pixellot, the global leader for AI automated sport video & analytics.

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