The American CueSports Alliance (abbreviated ACS) is a non-profit league-sanctioning body for cue sports in the United States. They produce national billiards tournaments on an annual basis, in areas such as eight-ball and nine-ball.
The ACS's stated mission is "to heighten the interest and awareness of cue sports through the support and sanctioning of organized competition throughout the United States and North America." The ACS is headquartered in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
The ACS has a Canadian affiliate organization, the Canadian Cue Sport Association (CCS). There is an annual ACS/CCS international championship in Las Vegas, Nevada, held in May. CCS is also affiliated with the Canadian Billiards and Snooker Association (CBSA).
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Cue sports are a wide variety of games of skill played with a cue, which is used to strike billiard balls and thereby cause them to move around a cloth-covered table bounded by elastic bumpers known as cushions.
Eight-ball is a pool billiards played on a billiard table with six pockets, cue sticks, and sixteen billiard balls: a cue ball and fifteen object balls. The object balls include seven solid-colored balls numbered 1 through 7, seven striped balls numbered 9 through 15, and the black 8 ball. After the balls are scattered with a break shot, a player is assigned either the group of solid or striped balls once they have legally pocketed a ball from that group. The object of the game is to legally pocket the 8-ball in a "called" pocket, which can only be done after all of the balls from a player's assigned group have been cleared from the table.
Nine-ball is a discipline of the cue sport pool. The game's origins are traceable to the 1920s in the United States. It is played on a rectangular billiard table with pockets at each of the four corners and in the middle of each long side. Using a cue stick, players must strike the white cue ball to pocket nine colored billiard balls, hitting them in ascending numerical order. An individual game is won by the player pocketing the 9-ball. Matches are usually played as a race to a set number of racks, with the player who reaches the set number winning the match.
English billiards, called simply billiards in the United Kingdom and in many former British colonies, is a cue sport that combines the aspects of carom billiards and pool. Two cue balls and a red object ball are used. Each player or team uses a different cue ball. It is played on a billiards table with the same dimensions as one used for snooker and points are scored for cannons and pocketing the balls. English billiards has also, but less frequently, been referred to as "the English game", "the all-in game" and (formerly) "the common game".
The Billiard Congress of America (BCA) is a governing body for cue sports in North America, the regional member organization of the World Pool-Billiard Association (WPA). It was established under this name in 1948 as a non-profit trade organization in order to promote the sport and organize its players via tournaments at various levels. The BCA is headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado. The voting members of the organization are mostly equipment manufacturers.
A billiard ball is a small, hard ball used in cue sports, such as carom billiards, pool, and snooker. The number, type, diameter, color, and pattern of the balls differ depending upon the specific game being played. Various particular ball properties such as hardness, friction coefficient and, resilience are important to accuracy.
Pool is a classification of cue sports played on a table with six pockets along the rails, into which balls are deposited. Each specific pool game has its own name; some of the better-known include eight-ball, blackball, nine-ball, ten-ball, seven-ball, straight pool, one-pocket, and bank pool.
The United States Snooker Association (USSA) is the internationally recognized governing body of the sport of snooker in the United States, with its current headquarters registered in Berkeley, California.
The following is a glossary of traditional English-language terms used in the three overarching cue sports disciplines: carom billiards referring to the various carom games played on a billiard table without pockets; pool, which denotes a host of games played on a table with six pockets; and snooker, played on a large pocket table, and which has a sport culture unto itself distinct from pool. There are also games such as English billiards that include aspects of multiple disciplines.
The World Pool-Billiard Association (WPA) is the international governing body for pool. It was formed in 1987, and was initially headed by a provisional board of directors consisting of representatives from Japan, the United States, Sweden, and Germany. as of February 2019, the WPA president is Ian Anderson of Australia. It is an associate of the World Confederation of Billiards Sports (WCBS), the international umbrella organization that encompasses the major cue sports.
Three-cushion billiards, also called three-cushion carom, is a popular form of carom billiards.
Blackball pool, also known as English pool, English eight-ball or simply reds and yellows, is a pool game originating in the United Kingdom and popularized across Europe and The Commonwealth, such as Australia and South Africa. In the UK and Ireland it is usually called simply "pool". The game is played with sixteen balls on a small pool table with six pockets.
The Union Mondiale de Billard is the world governing body for carom (carambole) billiard games.
The World Straight Pool Championship is a pool competition, that has been held annually in United States in its present form since 2006. It is one of the successor tournaments to the historical World Pocket Billiards Championship (1912–1990). During the modern tournament's early years, it was the only global professional title for straight pool. The event is currently organized by Dragon Promotions, in part to restore the game's popularity in the United States. Throughout the current event's history, only the 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2010 editions were sanctioned by the World Pool-Billiard Association (WPA) to be world championships. Since then, the tournament continues to be held under a different name of the World 14.1 Tournament without WPA sanctioning. Ralph Greenleaf is the most successful player having won the tournament on twenty occasions. The oldest player to win the tournament is Irving Crane at 59 years old at the time of his victory. The youngest player to win the tournament is Ralph Greenleaf at 20 years old at the time of his victory.
Carom billiards and pool are two types of cue sports or billiards-family games, which as a general class are played with a stick called a cue which is used to strike billiard balls, moving them around a cloth-covered billiard table bounded by rubber cushions attached to the confining rails of the table.
ACUI is one of the oldest associations in higher education, and dates to 1914. This association is the largest organization that represents student activity centers and student unions in the United States. As of 2016, the organization has 522 member institutions in ten countries.
The Billiards and Snooker Federation of India (BSFI) is the governing body for cue sports in India.