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.
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.
One-pocket is a pool game. Only one pocket for each player is used in this game, unlike other games played on a pool table where any pocket can be used to score object balls. The object of the game is to score points. A point is made when a player pockets any object ball into their designated pocket. The winner is the first to score an agreed-upon number of points.
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.
Russian pyramid, also known as Russian billiards, is a form of billiards played on a large billiard table with narrow pockets. It is played across Russia and several former Soviet/Eastern Bloc countries. In the West, the game is known as pyramid billiards, or simply pyramid.
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".
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.
Rotation, sometimes called rotation pool, 15-ball rotation, or 61, is a pool game, played with a pocketed billiards table, cue ball, and triangular rack of fifteen billiard balls, in which the lowest-numbered object ball on the table must be always struck by the cue ball first, to attempt to pocket numbered balls for points.
Three-ball is a folk game of pool played with any three standard pool object balls and cue ball. The game is frequently gambled upon. The goal is to pocket the three object balls in as few shots as possible. The game involves a somewhat more significant amount of luck than either nine-ball or eight-ball, because of the disproportionate value of pocketing balls on the break shot and increased difficulty of doing so.
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.
Five-pin billiards or simply five-pins or 5-pins, is today usually a carom billiards form of cue sport, though sometimes still played on a pocket table. In addition to the customary three balls of most carom games, it makes use of a set of five upright pins (skittles) arranged in a "+" pattern at the center of the table. The game is popular especially in Italy and Argentina, but also in some other parts of Latin America and Europe, with international, televised professional tournaments. It is sometimes referred to as Italian five-pins or Italian billiards, or as simply italiana. A variant of the game, goriziana or nine-pins, adds additional skittles to the formation. A related pocket game, with larger pins, is played in Scandinavia and is referred to in English as Danish pin billiards, with a Swedish variant that has some rules more similar to the Italian game.
Bottle pool is a billiards game. It combines aspects of both carom and pocket billiards. Played on a standard pool table, the game utilizes three balls and a narrow-necked bottle called a shake or tally bottle. The bottle is traditionally made from leather, and 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.
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.
James William Moore, known as "Cowboy Jimmy Moore", was a world-class American pocket billiards (pool) player originally from Troup County, Georgia, and for most of his life a resident of Albuquerque, New Mexico, best known for his mastery in the game of straight pool.
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.
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.
