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.
Eight-ball is a discipline of pool played on a billiard table with six pockets, cue sticks, and sixteen billiard 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.
William Joseph Mosconi was an American professional pool player from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Mosconi is widely considered one of the greatest pool players of all time. Between the years of 1941 and 1957, he won the World Straight Pool Championship nineteen times. For most of the 20th century, his name was essentially synonymous with pool in North America – he was nicknamed "Mr. Pocket Billiards" – and he was among the first Billiard Congress of America Hall of Fame inductees. Mosconi pioneered and regularly employed numerous trick shots, set many records, and helped to popularize pool as a national recreation activity.
Straight pool, which is also called 14.1 continuous and 14.1 rack, is a cue sport in which two competing players attempt to pocket as many object balls as possible without playing a foul. The game was the primary version of pool played in professional competition until it was superseded by faster-playing games like nine-ball and eight-ball in the 1980s.
Golf billiards is a pocket billiards game usually played for money. Unlike the majority of such games, it allows more than two people to play without compromises or rule changes. The game borrows from the outdoor game of golf, which is historically related to the cue sports. It is usually played on 10-foot or 12-foot snooker tables as their size and structure are more appropriate. In 2006 the Billiard Congress of America commented it was more popular than snooker in the United States.
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.
Pool is a series of cue sports played on a billiard table. The table has six pockets along the rails, into which balls are shot. Of the many different pool games, the most popular include: eight-ball, blackball, nine-ball, ten-ball, seven-ball, straight pool, one-pocket, and bank pool. Eight-ball is the most frequently played discipline of pool, and it is often thought of as synonymous with "pool".
Four-ball billiards or four-ball carom is a carom billiards game, played on a pocketless table with four billiard balls, usually two red and two white, one of the latter with a spot to distinguish it. Each player is assigned one of the white balls as a cue ball. A point is scored when a shooter's cue ball caroms on any two other balls in the same shot. Two points are scored when the shooter caroms on each of the three object balls in a single shot. A carom on only one ball results in no points, and ends the shooter's inning.
Bank pool is a pool game that has as its most fundamental requirement that all scoring shots in the game must be made by banking a called ball off a cushion and into a called pocket.
Ten-ball is a rotation pool game similar to nine-ball, but using ten balls instead of nine, and with the 10 ball instead of the 9 as the "money ball".
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.
Cowboy pool is a hybrid pool game combining elements of English billiards through an intermediary game, with more standard pocket billiards characteristics. The game employs four balls, the cue ball and three others, numbered one, three, and five. A game of Cowboy pool is contested as a race to 101 points, with those points being awarded for a host of different shot types. Dating back to 1908, the game is a strictly amateur pastime.
Honolulu, also known as banks, kisses, and combinations or indirect, is a pocket billiards game. Players must pocket all shots in an indirect fashion to reach a set number of points. The game shares some similarities with other cue sports, played on tables and with balls used for pool, but differs with foul points being awarded for regular direct shots.
Kelly pool is a pool game played on a standard pool table using a standard set of 16 pool balls. Gameplay involves players each drawing one of 16 numbered markers called peas or pills at random from a shake bottle, which assigns to them the correspondingly numbered pool ball, kept secret from their opponents, but which they must pocket to win the game. Kelly pool is a rotation game, which means that players must contact the lowest numbered object ball on each shot first until the opportunity to pocket their own is presented. If a player draws the number 16, this player is assigned the cue ball. In order to pocket the cue ball, the player must contact the lowest ball first and in the same shot, pocket the cue ball. However, the game is commonly played by removing the pea numbered 16 and playing with the basic 15 numbered balls and corresponding peas. Two rule variants are set forth under rules promulgated by the Billiard Congress of America (BCA). In the simpler form, the object of play starts and ends with the goal of pocketing one's secret ball. In the second, in addition to the goal of pocketing one's secret ball, points are scored in various ways. In the instance where pills are unavailable, a cloth may be used to cover the balls, which are then chosen blindly, recorded, and replaced for play.
Cribbage, sometimes called cribbage pool, fifteen points and pair pool, is a two-player pool game that, like its namesake card game, has a scoring system which awards points for pairing groups of balls that total 15. Played on a standard pool table, participants who pocket a ball of a particular number are required to immediately pocket the companion ball that tallies to 15 when added to the prior ball's number. Each pair so pocketed counts as a cribbage; there are seven such pairs, and the 15 ball counts as an eighth by itself after all of the others have been pocketed. The first player to score five cribbages wins the game.
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".
Seven-ball is a rotation pool game with rules similar to nine-ball, though it differs in two key ways: the game uses only seven object balls as implied by its name, and play is restricted to particular pockets of the table. William D. Clayton is credited with the game's invention in the early 1980s.
Fifteen-ball pool, also known as sixty-one pool, is a pocket billiards game developed in America in the nineteenth century from pyramid pool. Created by members of the Bassford's Billiard & Chess Rooms in Manhattan during the late 1830s or 1840s, it is the ancestor to many American pool games.
