Northern Snooker Centre

You only get one chance to make a first impression. — So well in Northern Snooker!
Now i admit i can count the number of pool halls i’ve been to on one hand (and if i lost a few fingers before the finishing of this review it would not cease to be true). But i have to say i was blown away a bit by this place.
Now it wasn’t busy that was true. For a friday night i might have expected a few more punters. Then again i could only just about make out the far wall. There are a supreme number of tables, all full sized American suitable flanked by yankee paraphernalia and ambient setting bits of ephemera, signs, American footballers and a pretty well stocked juke box.
For a place seemingly out of the way the bar was exceptionally cheap and in my entire evening there i never queued once for a beer. I haven’t much to quantify the rent of a table but £10 deposit returned and £10 for the four hours i feel i spent playing pool all seemed very worth while to me.
The whole affair felt a little like entering Ned Flanders Rumpus room, a massively well stocked and ordered version of your own dream garage conversion. A little playground on the outskirts of Leeds!

I’ve been here quite a few times in the evening with friends from work. The atmosphere is always pretty good, moderatly busy with a jukebox playing loads of recent music.
There are loads of American pool tables — the cues and other equipment is all well maintained and there’s always plenty of elbow room to play. The food is typical pool-​bar food — burger and fries etc and the drinks are what you would expect — lagers and spirits.
I think it’s £2 entry for guests so if you visit often it’s worth getting a membership. Unfortunately I can’t remember any costs, but it’s a decent place if you’re into snooker and pool.

One for the ‘professional’ snooker or pool player. They have match sized tables as far as the eye can see and there is even food offered throughout the day and night.
The food is a little below the standard of regular pub food, you wont get anything that hasn’t been fried or micro-​waved. The bar is well stocked and not too expensive for what it is.
Upstairs in the pool room it has a tendency to get a little heated on a weekend night and you do get quite a few suspicious characters hanging around. There are always plenty of staff around though to help but at busier times it can get littered with dirty plates and glasses.

I sometimes wonder if an invisible barrier exists between Burley and Kirkstall roads, somehow funnelling the thousands of students resident in Burley Road’s huge residential complexes towards Hyde Park and the city centre, and rendering them completely unable to register anything happening behind them on Kirkstall Road. This traditional snooker hall/​American-​themed pool bar seems evidence of this; despite being almost directly behind the hulking mass of Opal and offering good value student nights every Monday, it always seems fairly bereft of students, and even people come to that. It’s a shame really; for pool and snooker die-​hards, it offers a whopping 45 quality tables at a rate similar to Elbow Rooms but without the unnecessary ‘fashionable’ trimmings, while for everyone else the drinks offers and cheap food should be enough to bring more people than they do through the doors. Come for the lethal combination of cheap drinks and serious poker on a Monday, or, for the real geeks among us, to play on the snooker table used in the 2005 World Championships. But don’t bring too many people… it’s quite nice as it is.

Northern is a huge (and I mean huge) pool hall that sits on the outskirts of Leeds city centre, serving snooker, pool and beer in equal measure to locals and students alike. It has been around for years, and as such is undoubtedly the most established snooker place in Leeds.
The ground floor houses dozens of full sized snooker tables, on which you will find both professionals and ultimate beginners trying their luck in a chilled out masculine atmosphere (I’ve never seen a female in this place). You need a membership before you can play (you can sign up for a year for £4 or become a day member for £1), and you then pay an hourly rate based on how long you were on your table. This rate varies but it seems to be in the region of £5 an hour — obviously, this is halved by the fact that you and your opponent can share the cost, meaning it’s a pretty reasonable rate.
Upstairs is Stateside Pool, an American themed area stocked with pool tables and cheesy décor — your membership allows you to use either floor whenever you so desire. Food and drink is relatively cheap, and on the same standard as a pub lunch (they even offer a roast dinner on Sundays for (£4), but the best thing about Northern is that it is only shut for two and a half hours a day. Thus, if you like snooker or pool, and you like playing it until 7AM, you need to get to Northern.