Cue sports, also known as billiard sports, are a wide variety of games of skill generally played with a cue stick, which is used to strike billiard balls and thereby cause them to move around a cloth-covered billiards table bounded by elastic bumpers known as cushions.
Nine-ball is a cue sport and type of pool. The game is traceable to origins in the 1920 in the United States. It is played on a rectangular table covered with a colored cloth, with pockets at each of the four corners and in the middle of each long side. Using a cue stick and nine colored balls, players must strike the white ball to pot or pocket the remaining balls in the correct sequence. Balls are numbered one through nine being potted in ascending order. An individual game, is won by the player pocketing the number nine ball. Matches are usually played as a race to a set number of racks, with the winner being the player to reach the set number of racks won.
Efren Manalang Reyes,, nicknamed The Magician and Bata, is a Filipino professional pool player. A winner of over 80 international titles, Reyes was the first player to win world championships in two different disciplines in pool. Among his numerous titles Reyes is a four-time World Eight-ball Champion, the 1999 WPA World Nine-ball Champion, a two-time World Cup champion, a three-time US Open winner, a two-time World Pool League winner and a 13-time Derby City Classic winner – including an unprecedented five Master of the Table crowns. By defeating Earl Strickland in the inaugural Color of Money event in 1997, Reyes took home the largest single event purse in pool history of $100k. Many analysts, fans, current and former players consider Reyes to be the greatest pool player of all time.
William Joseph Mosconi was an American professional pool player from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Between the years of 1941 and 1957, he won the World Straight Pool Championship an unmatched fifteen 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, also called 14.1 continuous or 14.1 rack, is a type of pool game. It was the common sport of championship competition until it was overtaken by faster-playing games like nine-ball.
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.
Cutthroat or cut-throat is a typically three-player or team pocket billiards game, played on a pool table, with a full standard set of pool balls ; the game cannot be played with three or more players with an unnumbered reds-and-yellows ball set, as used in blackball. Each player is commonly assigned a set of five consecutively numbered object balls, though the number of balls will vary by number of players. The object of the game is to be the last player with at least one ball of their group remaining on the table.
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.
Russian pyramid, also known as Russian billiard is a form of pocket billiards played on a modified snooker table with narrower pockets. It is popular across Eastern Europe as well as countries of the former Soviet Union/Eastern Bloc. A variant with colored balls modeled on those of pool is known as Russian pool. In Western countries, the game is known as pyramid billiards, or simply pyramid within professional circle.
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 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 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 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 hybrid pocket/carom games such as English billiards.
Chicago is a "money ball" pool gambling game.
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 only four balls, the cue ball and three numbered balls, the 1, 3 and 5. It is played to 101 points, with points being awarded for a host of different shot types.
Baseball pocket billiards or baseball pool is a pocket billiards (pool) game suitable for multiple players that borrows phraseology and even some aspects of form from the game of baseball. For instance, although baseball pool is played on a standard pool table, the 9 ball is known as the "pitcher", the table's foot spot where balls are racked is known as "home plate", and each team or player is afforded "nine innings" to score as many "runs" as possible.
Bottle pool, also known as bottle-billiards and bottle pocket billiards, is a hybrid billiards game combining aspects of both carom billiards and pocket billiards. Played on a standard pool table, the game uses just two object balls, a cue ball, and a 6¾ inch (171 mm) tall, narrow-necked bottle called a shake bottle or tally bottle, traditionally made from leather, that is placed on the table and used as a target for caroms. Those unfamiliar with the game sometimes mistakenly use its name as a synonym for the very different game of kelly pool. Bottle pool has been described as combining "elements of billiards, straight pool and chess under a set of rules that lavishly rewards strategic shot making and punishes mistakes with Sisyphean point reversals."
Cribbage, sometimes called cribbage pocket billiards, cribbage pool, fifteen points and pair pool, is a two-player pocket billiards 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. The goal is to score 5 paired cribbages out of a possible 8, with the exception that the last ball, required to be the 15 ball, is not paired but alone counts as 1 cribbage.
Frank Taberski (1889–1941) was a professional pocket billiards player from Schenectady, New York. Nicknamed "The Gray Fox," he won 10 world title challenge matches in a row. He was ranked number 7 on the Billiards Digest 50 Greatest Players of the Century.
The U.S. Open Straight Pool Championship is a pocket billiards tournament held in the United States, and one of the few featuring the discipline of straight pool. After being disbanded for sixteen years, the event was resurrected in 2016.
