For many, snooker may have the appeal of a slug sandwich but as a gruelling tactical battle of wills, technique and concentration, it's enchanting.
It's a sport which has deflected too much change and twins brilliantly with television. Overhead cameras are able to show us the difficulties facing players from behind the cue ball while expert comments from Steve Davis, Stephen Hendry, Dennis Taylor, John Virgo et al take us through the angles and options.
Possible escape routes from snookers are superimposed on the table as the experts debate the percentages around those tactics.
Some players, such as defending champion Mark Selby, are ultra-deliberate, chalking their cue, wiping the cloth and walking round the table while O'Sullivan is in rapid-fire motion, barely leaving the referee time to re-spot a colour before he is on to his next target.
If he's slightly out of position he will change from his natural right-hand action to a southpaw grip and be equally deadly.
His touch did desert him as he fell in the quarters to China's Ding Junhui but the "Rocket" still managed a glorious 146, one short of the maximum, in the later stages of that duel.
Until the 33-frame semifinals, rivals sat next to each other in cubicles as games were played simultaneously on tables separated by a partition.
There was no escape when frames finished and the cameras zoomed in on the contestants to catch their reactions.
No alcohol either. Those days have gone the way of big Bill Werbeniuk and his medical exemption which allowed him to drain pints to help calm a tremor. These days the players are on bottled water or energy drinks.
Chain-smoking, once the domain of Alex "Hurricane" Higgins and Jimmy "Whirlwind" White, has the red card, too, and White, a six-time runner-up, lost his tour card for the first time in 37 years after losing in a tournament qualifier.
But give or take a bow-tie or two, not much has changed.
Players carry extensions to butt into their cues and avoid using the rest, some like the unfulfilled talent of Judd Trump are fashionably coiffured and shod, others such as Marco Fu are remarkably impassive.
Surprises happen like the noisy gee-up the usually impassive Neil Robertson gave himself after winning a close frame or the flukes which invariably occur in a 23-ball trigonometry exam. Pressure rides with them all.
Higgins has a few more scars in his 42 years. The four-time champ served a six month ban in 2011 for failing to report an approach to fix a game but after a lean spell is back in the run to the crown and in a tough, relentless grind, he and world No1 Selby will be favoured this weekend. O'Sullivan was, too, but sentimentalism does not count on the Crucible scoreboard.
