What prevents players from nursing the balls in snooker?

Question

In straight pool there is a rule to prevent nursing, which means nudging a ball to the rail as a safety. Without this rule players could spend hours just playing one safety after another nursing balls along the rail.

In snooker, however, there is no such rule, and, in fact, a player does not even need to hit a rail, so players could safety just by nudging balls a quarter of an inch on each hit, although I do not seem to see them do this. Is there any reason why snooker players cannot nurse balls?

Answer 1

The premise of the question is fundamentally wrong. Playing the ball to a difficult position and leaving the racked reds as intact as possible is a common early-game tactic.

Only when the reds are freed up do the players begin earnestly seeking points, but this is the only point where such nursing would become possible.

The tactic works because the players are required to make contact with a ball on, meaning a red, at each visit. The size of the table (and the skill of players to make a pot on any loose ball and set up the colour afterwards, at the higher level) makes this an extremely difficult thing to maintain for an indefinite time. Eventually the racked reds are sufficiently broken to enable a substantial break, and leave insufficient cover to resume "nursing".

However the opportunity to begin snookering the opponent grows as the number of balls on dwindles, so the switch between aggressive attack and conservative defence can occur multiple times throughout a frame.

Answer 2

After watching enough professional snooker I finally figured out the answer to this question.

The answer is that they can indeed nurse balls and the way this is dealt with in snooker is a re-rack. So, basically what happens is that if both players indicate they will nurse, then they agree to a re-rack and the game is annulled and a new game is started.