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. Cue sports are also collectively referred to as billiards, though this term has more specific connotations in some varieties of English.
Snooker is a cue sport played on a rectangular billiards table covered with a green cloth called baize, with six pockets, one at each corner and one in the middle of each long side. First played by British Army officers stationed in India in the second half of the 19th century, the game is played with twenty-two balls, comprising a white cue ball, fifteen red balls, and six other balls—a yellow, green, brown, blue, pink, and black—collectively called the colours. Using a cue stick, the individual players or teams take turns to strike the cue ball to pot other balls in a predefined sequence, accumulating points for each successful pot and for each time the opposing player or team commits a foul. An individual frame of snooker is won by the player who has scored the most points. A snooker match ends when a player reaches a predetermined number of frames.
Efren Manalang Reyes, popularly known by the nicknames "Bata" and "The Magician", is a Filipino professional pool player, who is widely regarded as the greatest pool player of all time, and especially famed for his skill at the challenging one-pocket discipline. In 2003, he was inducted into the Billiard Congress of America's Hall of Fame.
A billiard table or billiards table is a bounded table on which cue sports are played. In the modern era, all billiards tables provide a flat surface usually made of quarried slate, that is covered with cloth, and surrounded by vulcanized rubber cushions, with the whole thing elevated above the floor. More specific terms are used for specific sports, such as snooker table and pool table, and different-sized billiard balls are used on these table types. An obsolete term is billiard board, used in the 16th and 17th centuries.
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 cue sports of snooker, English billiards, and three-cushion carom for men, as well as eight-ball and nine-ball pool for both men and women, were contested at the 2006 Asian Games in Doha, Qatar from December 4 to December 11. All events were held at the Al-Sadd Multi-Purpose Hall.
The English-originating version of eight-ball pool, also known as English pool, English eight-ball, blackball, or simply reds and yellows, is a pool game played with sixteen balls on a small pool table with six pockets. It originated in the United Kingdom and is played in the Commonwealth countries such as Australia and South Africa. In the UK and Ireland it is usually called simply "pool".
Virtual Pool 3 is a 3D, first-person sports video game that simulates various cue sports, developed and released for Windows and PlayStation by Celeris. The game features 15 pool disciplines, snooker, and two varieties of carom billiards.
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.
The cue sports competition at the 2009 World Games, including three-cushion billiards, nine-ball and snooker, took place from 22 to 26 July, at the Chung Cheng Martial Arts Stadium in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
The men's singles three-cushion billiards competition at the 2005 World Games took place from 20 to 24 July 2005 at the Saalbau Bottrop in Duisburg, Germany.
The men's singles nine-ball competition at the 2005 World Games took place from 20 to 24 July 2005 at the Saalbau Bottrop in Duisburg, Germany.
The women's singles nine-ball competition at the 2005 World Games took place from 20 to 24 July 2005 at the Saalbau Bottrop in Duisburg, Germany.
The men's singles snooker competition at the 2005 World Games took place from 20 to 24 July 2005 at the Saalbau Bottrop in Duisburg, Germany.
The cue sports competition at the 2001 World Games, including three-cushion billiards, nine-ball and snooker, took place from 22 to 26 August at the Selion Plaza in Akita, Japan. 62 competitors, from 24 nations, participated in the tournament.
Cue sports, including three-cushion billiards, nine-ball and snooker, were introduced as World Games sports for men and for women also at the World Games 2001 in Akita.
The 2005–06 snooker season was a series of snooker tournaments played between 17 May 2005 and 10 May 2006. There were six ranking tournaments, and the British Open and Irish Masters tournaments were removed from calendar. The Northern Ireland Trophy was held for the first time as non-ranking tournament, and the Pot Black was held again after a 12-year hiatus.
Cue sports for the 2013 Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games was held at the Songdo Convensia in Incheon, South Korea. It took place from 29 June to 6 July 2013. This was the third time this sport was part of the Games, after Macau 2007 and Hanoi 2009.
The cue sports competition at the 2013 World Games, including three-cushion billiards, nine-ball and snooker, took place from July 26 to 30 at the Unidad Deportiva Alberto Galindo in Cali, Colombia.
In 2018, championships were held across three continents to determine the best players in major cue sports, including snooker, pool, and English billiards. While these are mostly single player sports, some matches and tournaments are held as either doubles or as team events. The snooker season runs between May and April; the pool and billiards seasons run through the calendar year.
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