The goal of Sami Erkkilä, who has recently become a referee in professional competitions, is to referee the snooker World Cup final. He has already left his mark on the top players in his field.
In 2017, new winds blew on the professional snooker tour. A billiard enthusiast from Jyväskylä Toni Ursini developed chalk was loved by top players because it did not leave dust on the table.
When the white cue ball hits the target ball, the dust caused by the kick sometimes causes an unclean hit, or kick. It ruins the batting at worst.
Since then, on the 128-player professional tour, only a few exceptions have not taken Ursini’s chalk as their own.
Cut to today.
A man dressed in a black formal suit puts white cotton gloves on his hands in Cabin Street Snooker, a game room in Helsinki. At one of the eight game tables in the hall, one of Finland’s top players, aspiring to become a professional snooker, practices Heikki Niva.
When the gloves and bow are in place, Niva can help Sami Erkkilän, Finland’s only snooker professional so far. Erkkilä, 44, is a snooker referee who has refereed games in five professional tour tournaments this season. Erkkilä, who works as a pilot by civilian profession, has ended up in them largely by chance.
– It was in the spring of 2019 when I watched the broadcast and Aki Kauppinen advertised the referee course on Eurosport’s broadcast. Nothing more than a name on the list and a course here at Cabin in April 2019.
– After that, it was a year and a half that I didn’t referee a single match. There was always work or children’s hobbies. Then came the corona virus, and there were layoffs in the civilian profession, Erkkilä recalls.
When the layoffs fell in the fall of 2020, Erkkilä did not rest on his laurels.
– That’s when I grabbed my white gloves, opened the competition calendar on the website of the Finnish Billiards Association and saw that Cabin has divar competitions. I called the competition director, and we are still on that road.
The invention made famous
In the spring of 2024, Erkkilä will already be known at the top of World Snooker, the umbrella organization of the professional snooker tour. Judging skills are an important, but not the most significant, reason for that.
– I noticed right away in the first match that, in the event of an error, placing the balls in the places before the shot is quite challenging, especially when several balls are moving. As a person with an engineering background, I thought it would be nice to come up with a solution that would make this easier.
Erkkilä set out to develop the idea and contacted his friend who knew about coding. The duo’s collaboration gave birth to a tool that allows the referee to check on the cell phone screen where the balls were before the player’s foul shot.
In TV matches of professional competitions, the referee is assisted by another referee, who assists his colleague in putting the balls in the right places in the above-mentioned situations.
Erkkilä’s invention is based on a camera placed above the gaming table. It saves the game in pictures, which the referee can return to on his own initiative with a few clicks on the mobile phone screen. After this, the judge can easily compare the positioning of the balls before and after based on the superimposed images.
Now top judges are responsible for the refereeing activities of the umbrella organization Paul Collier and Jan Verhaas are thinking about harnessing the invention for tables outside of the TV implementation. That is, for the majority of professional matches.
– Let’s see if it will be available in the near future, says Erkkilä.
The goal is the World Cup final
Extremes have played a big role in Erkkilä’s life, of which snooker represents calmness. The other side is the speed, the roots of which go back much further than the 19-year-long job as a flight captain.
At the beginning of the millennium, Erkkilä was one of Finland’s most promising karting drivers.
– Gold and silver can be found in the trophy cabinet.
In the championship year 2000, Erkkilä finished second Heikki Kovalainenand in the silver seasons of 1997 and 1998, he had to admit that he was better Kimi Räikkönen.
– Speed has always been in the blood. Snooker offers a good counterbalance.
Although his career did not lead to F1 circles, as a flight captain he has been able to control the largest planes flying between continents, traveling at a speed of a thousand kilometers per hour.
However, the turn caused by Corona may turn into a change of industry in the long term.
– It would be great to reach the World Cup final. It is possible in a period of 10–15 years, says Erkkilä.