[Skybird]

Yes, but any player needs them both. Positional understanding and seeing where and how the white ball should be placed, does not help you if you cannot realise it in your practical play, which means you must be able to continue, which means you must pot. Potting alone leads you nowhere if the white balls strays all across the table and you cannot continue.

You need both: potting skill and knowing where and how to place the white ball.

Its one of my regrets that I cannot play Snooker better, and never could (if I could play it at all..). Only my loss of earlier chess competence in my young years I mourn more. I paused in chess for too many years, over a decade, and when going back to it I found that I had forgotten so much, lost so much routine and memory skill and ability to visualise, it translated into a serious loss of playing strength. I never recovered that. It really itches me. I was very good at it, won correspondence chess tournaments and qualified in the shortest possible time to master class in the German federation in it. Also played club chess, and some tournaments there as well (without enthusiasm, however, tournaments never interested me that much), in Berlin our team was one of the two or three strongest in town in those years, mid-80s. With the school team, two times winner of the Berlin yearly school competitions.

Sorry for the boasting, but that were good times! Better feel of life. Things could still fascinate, there was magic in stuff. But I stray off, sorry.