WHAT IS POOL (BILLIARD) GAME?

Pool, also more formally known as pocket billiards (mostly in North America) or pool billiards (mostly in
Europe and Australia), is the family of cue sports and games played on a pool table having six
receptacles called pockets along the rails, into which balls are deposited as the main goal of play. An
obsolete term for pool is six-pocket.
There are hundreds of pool games. Some of the more well known include eight-ball (and the
variant blackball), nine-ball (with variants ten-ball and seven-ball), straight pool (14.1 continuous), one-
pocket, and bank pool.
There are also hybrid games combining aspects of both pool and carom billiards, such as American four-
ball billiards, cowboy pool, and bottle pool.
The Oxford English Dictionary states that pool is generally "any of various types of billiards for two or
more players" but goes on to note that the first specific meaning of "a game in which each player uses a
cue ball of a distinctive colour to pocket the balls of the other player(s) in a certain order, the winner
taking all the stakes submitted at the start of the contest" is now obsolete, and its other specific definitions
are all for games that originate in the United States.
In the United States, although the original "pool" game was played on a pocketless carom billiards table,
the term later stuck to all new games of pocket billiards as the sport gained in popularity, and so outside
the cue sports industry, which has long favored the more formal term pocket billiards, the common name
for the sport has remained pool. The OxfordDictionaries.com definition no longer even provides the
obsolete meaning found in the print edition, and refers only to the typical game "using two sets [each] of
seven coloured and numbered balls ... with one black ball and a white cue ball" on a table with pockets.

HISTORY OF BILLIARDS (OR POOL)

The History of billiards is long and very rich. The game has been played by kings and commoners,
presidents, mental patients, ladies, gentlemen, and hustlers alike. It evolved from a lawn game similar to
the croquet played some-time during the 15th century in Northern Europe and probably in France. Play
moved indoors to a wooden table with green cloth to simulate grass, and a simple border was placed
around the edges. The balls were shoved, rather than struck, with wooden sticks called "maces." The
term "billiard" is derived from French, either from the word "billart", one of the wooden sticks, or "bille", a
ball.
Most of our information about early billiards comes from accounts of playing by royalty and other nobles.
It has been know as the "Noble Game of Billiards" since the early 1800’s but there is evidence that people
from all walks of life played the game since its inception. In 1600, the game was familiar enough to the
public that Shakespeare mentioned it in Antony and Cleopatra. Seventy-five years later, the first book of
billiards rules remarked of England that there were few "few Tones of note therein which hath not a
publick Billiard-Table."
The cue stick was developed in the late 1600’s. When the ball lay near a rail, the mace was very
inconvenient to use because of its large head. In such a case, the players would turn the mace around
and use its handle to strike the ball. The handle was called a "queue" meaning "tail" from which we get
the word "cue." For a long time only men were allowed to use the cue; women were forced to use the
mace because it was felt they were more likely to rip the cloth with the shaper cue.
Tables originally had flat walls for rails and their only function was to keep the balls from falling off. They
resembled river banks and even used to be called "banks". Players discovered that balls could bounce off
the rails and began deliberately aiming at them. Thus a "bank shot" is one in which a ball is made to
rebound from a cushion as part of the shot.
Billiard equipment improved rapidly in England after 1800, largely because of the Industrial Revolution.
Chalk was used to increase friction between the ball and the cue stick even before cues had tips. The
leather cue tip, with which a player can apply side-spin to the ball, was perfected by 1823. Visitors from
England showed Americans how use spin, which explains why it is called "English" in the United States
but nowhere else. (The British themselves refer to it as "side".) The two-piece cue arrived in 1829. Slate
became popular as a material for table beds around 1835. Goodyear discovered vulcanization of rubber
in 1839 and by 1845 it was used to make billiard cushions. A two-to-one ratio of length to width became
standard in the 18th century. Before then, there were no fixed table dimensions. By 1850, the billiard table
had essentially evolved into its current form.
The dominant billiard game in Britain from about 1770 until the 1920’s was English Billiards, played with
three balls and six pockets on a large rectangular table. The British billiard tradition is carried on today
primarily through the game of snooker, a complex and colorful game combining offensive and defensive
aspects and played on the same equipment as English Billiards but with 22 balls instead of three. The
British appetite for snooker is approached only by the American passion for baseball; it is possible to see
a snooker competition every day in Britain.
The dominant American billiard game until the 1870’s was American Four-Ball Billiards, usually played on
a large (11 or 12-foot), four-pocket table with four balls - two white and two red. It was a direct extension
English Billiards. Points were scored by pocketing balls, scratching the cue ball, or by making caroms on
two or three balls. A "carom" is the act of hitting two object balls with the cue ball in one stroke. With many
balls, there were many different ways of scoring and it was possible to make up to 13 pints on a single
shot. American Four-Ball produced two offspring, both of which surpassed it in popularity by the 1870’s.
One, simple caroms played with three balls on a pocketless table, is something known as "Straight rail",
the forerunner of all carom games. The other popular game was American Fifteen-Ball Pool, the
predecessor of modern pocket billiards.
The word "pool" means a collective bet, or ante. Many non-billiard games, such as poker, involve a pool
but it was to pocket billiards that the name became attached. The term "poolroom" now means a place
where pool is played, but in the 19th century a poolroom was a betting parlor for horse racing. Pool tables
were installed so patrons could pass time between races. The two became connected in the public mind,
but the unsavory connotation of "poolroom" came from the betting that took place there, not from billiards.
Fifteen-Ball Pool was played with 15 object balls, numbered 1 through 15. For sinking a ball, the player
received a number of points equal to the value of the ball. The sum of the ball values in a rack is 120, so
the first player who received more than half the total, or 61, was the winner. This game, also called "61-
Pool" was used in the first American championship pool tournament held in 1878 and won by Cyrille Dion,
a Canadian. In 1888, it was thought more fair to count the number of balls pocketed by a player and not
their numerical value. Thus, Continuous Pool replaced Fifteen-Ball Pool as the championship game. The
player who sank the last ball of a rack would break the next rack and his point total would be kept
"continuously" from one rack to the next.

Eight-Ball was invented shortly after 1900; Straight Pool followed in 1910. Nine-Ball seems to have
developed around 1920.
While the term "billiards" refers to all games played on a billiard table, with or without pockets, some
people take billiards to mean carom games only and use pool for pocket games. Through the 1930’s,
both pool and billiards, particularly three-cushion billiards, shared the spotlight.
From 1878 until 1956, pool and billiard championship tournaments were held almost annually, with one-
on-one challenge matches filling the remaining months. At times, including during the Civil War, billiard
results received wider coverage than war news. Players were so renowned that cigarette cards were
issued featuring them. Pool went to war several times as a popular recreation for the troops. Professional
players toured military posts giving exhibitions; some even worked in the defense Industry. But the game
had more trouble emerging from World War II than it had getting into it. Returning soldiers were in a mood
to buy houses and build careers, and the charm of an afternoon spent at the pool table was a thing of the
past. Room after room closed quietly and by the end of the 1950’s it looked as though the game might
pass into oblivion.
Billiards was revived by two electrifying events, one in 1961, the other in 1986. The first was the release
of the movie, "The Hustler". The black-and-white film depicted the dark life of a pool hustler with Paul
Newman in the title role. New rooms opened all over the country and for the remainder of the 60’s pool
flourished until social concerns, the Vietnam War, and a desire for outdoor coeducational activities led to
a decline in billiard interest. In 1986, "The Color of Money", the sequel to "The Hustler" with Paul Newman
in the same role and Tom Cruise as an up-and-coming professional, brought the excitement of pool to a
new generation. The result was the opening of "upscale" rooms catering to people whose senses would
have been offended by the old rooms if they had ever seen them. This trend began slowly in 1987 and
has since surged.
In the 1920’s, the poolroom was an environment in which men gathered to loiter, smoke, fight, bet, and
play. The rooms of today bear no resemblance to those of the earlier times. Until very recently, billiards
was completely dominated by men. The atmosphere of the poolroom was very forbidding and women had
trouble being accepted there. Nonetheless, women have been enthusiastic players since the game was
brought up from the ground in the 15th century. For over 200 hundred years, women of fashion have
played the game. In the past, it was very difficult for a woman to develop billiard skills because male
players, her family, and friends usually did not support her efforts and it was not easy to find experienced
female instructors or coaches. As these situations have changed, and continue to change, we can expect
women to equal men in ability and take the game to new heights.

Basic Equipment

Billiards defines any game played on a table with a cue and balls. Billiards is a game that relies on the
fundamentals of physics and geometry, and becoming an expert in billiards requires skillful mastery of the
game's equipment. This equipment includes:
 Balls - Although each variation of billiards has different rules, the goal is always to strike the a
ball and move it in some fashion.
 Cue - A long, tapered rod that has a cushioned tip on the narrow end for striking the balls.
 Table - The playing surface that the balls travel on. Depending on the game it is designed for, the
table may or may not have pockets (holes) for the balls to fall into.

Rack
A rack is the name given to a frame (usually wood, plastic or aluminium) used to organize
billiard balls at the beginning of a game. This is traditionally triangular in shape, but varies
with the type of billiards played. There are two main types of racks; the more common
triangular shape which is used for eight-ball and straight pool and the diamond-shaped
rack used for nine-ball.
There are several other types of less common rack types that are also used, based on a
"template" to hold the billiard balls tightly together. Most commonly it is a thin plastic sheet
with diamond-shaped cut-outs that hold the balls that is placed on the table with the balls
set on top of the rack. The rack is used to set up the "break" and removed before the
"break shot" occurs.
Mechanical bridge
The mechanical bridge, sometimes called a "rake", "crutch", "bridge stick"
or simply "bridge", and in the UK a "rest", is used to extend a player's
reach on a shot where the cue ball is too far away for normal hand
bridging. It consists of a stick with a grooved metal or plastic head which
the cue slides on. Many amateurs refuse to use the mechanical bridge
based on the perception that to do so is unmanly.[citation needed] However,
many aficionados and most professionals employ the bridge whenever
the intended shot so requires.
Some players, especially current or former snooker players, use a screw-
on cue butt extension instead of or in addition to the mechanical bridge.
Bridge head design is varied, and not all designs (especially those with
cue shaft-enclosing rings, or wheels on the bottom of the head), are broadly tournament-approved.
In Italy a longer, thicker cue is typically available for this kind of tricky shot.
For snooker they are normally available in three forms, their use depending on how the player is
hampered; the standard rest is a simple cross, the 'spider' has a raised arch around 12 cm with three
grooves to rest the cue in and for the most awkward of shots, the 'giraffe' (or 'swan' in England) which has
a raised arch much like the 'spider' but with a slender arm reaching out around 15 cm with the groove.

Chalk
Chalk is applied to the tip of the cue stick, ideally before every shot, to increase the tip's
friction coefficient so that when it impacts the cue ball on a non-center hit,
no miscue (unintentional slippage between the cue tip and the struck ball) occurs. Cue tip
chalk is not actually the substance typically referred to as "chalk" (generally calcium
carbonate), but any of several proprietary compounds, with asilicate base. It was around
the time of the Industrial Revolution that newer compounds formed that provided better
grip for the ball. This is when the English began to experiment with side spin or applying
curl to the ball. This was shortly introduced to the American players and is how the term
"putting English on the ball" came to be. "Chalk" may also refer to a cone of fine, white hand chalk;
like talc (talcum powder) it can be used to reduce friction between the cue and bridge hand during
shooting, for a smoother stroke. Some brands of hand chalk actually are made of compressed talc. (Tip
chalk is not used for this purpose because it is abrasive, hand-staining and difficult to apply.) Many
players prefer a slick pool glove over hand chalk or talc because of the messiness of these powders;
buildup of particles on the cloth will affect ball behavior and necessitate more-frequent cloth cleaning.

PLAYING AREA
A billiard table or billiards table is a bounded table on which billiards-type games (cue sports) are
played. In the modern era, all billiards tables (whether for carom billiards, pool or snooker) provide a flat
surface usually made of quarried slate, that is covered with cloth (usually of a tightly-woven worsted
wool called baize), 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 ballsare used on these table types. An obsolete term is billiard board, used in the
16th and 17th centuries.
 1. The dots on the table are called diamonds and they are generally used to help players as a
guide for position during games.
2. The rails or cushions on the side of the table are called siderails or long rails
3. The dot on the table is the footspot of the table and this is where you place the head ball when
you are racking the balls at the beginning of a game.
4. This is called the bed of the table. It's usually made of slate or possibly wood and is covered in
cloth to make the balls roll smoothly
5. This is called the headstring. The cue ball must be behind this line when you break and
depending on the game when you scratch the cue ball must go behind this line.
6. These are the pockets of the pool table and this is where the balls have to go if you want to
continue your turn shooting in pool.
7. These are called the short rails or bottom/top rail

HOW TO PLAY BILLIARDS?

English Billiards is played between two people or two sides. Understanding the arrangement of balls on
the board is important before how to play. Three balls are used; a white, a yellow or spotted white (with
more than two black dots for identification), and a red. Player or team scores when striker pots the ball in
the pocket, for in-offs, cannon, and combination of both.
The points from a penalty made by a player are given to opponent player. One of the most popular
tactics used to score more points is to leave the object balls in baulk area when the next player is in-
hand. Any means made to disturb the balls must be by an indirect stroke, a difficult one.
The winner of the game is declared based on player who scores maximum points or stipulated points of
the game within the allotted time.
The winner of the match is decided on the highest average and total number of points.

Starting the Game

Most sports begin with a toss to decide who plays first. Stringing is the method of toss in Billiards.
The choice of cue-ball and who to play first is decided by stringing. The winner has both options
provided opposite player also mutually agrees. The game is considered to have begun after the cue-ball
is placed on the table and hit by tip of the cue.
It is the player’s responsibility to play with correct cue-ball even if the wrong ball is passed by the
referee. The players take turns alternately unless one makes a score and continues the strike.

Playing from in-hand

 The cue-ball must be struck from a position within “D” to play from in-hand
 The referee has to check whether the cue-ball is placed correctly, if asked.
  The cue-ball is not considered to be in play by the referee if the tip of the cue is not touching the
cue-ball; provided attempt to play is not made.
 When in-hand, the cue-ball must be placed out of baulk. In case, it touches an object ball out of
baulk, it is considered to have played out though it doesn’t cross the baulk line.
 The cue-ball may be played against a cushion provided it touches a ball outside baulk. Before re-
entering the baulk, the cue-ball must have contact with cushion or ball out of baulk.
 If an object ball is in baulk, no part of its surface can be played on directly from in-hand.
During the play, a player goes through certain instances that have been clearly marked by the WPBSA
to handle them better. Below are some those instances with next steps.

Spotting Object Balls

Starting with red ball, if it is pocketed then, it is placed back in its spot. In case the spot is occupied, red
ball is placed in pyramid spot. If the pyramid spot is also occupied then, it is placed in the centre spot.
 A ball is considered to be on spot if and only if it is placed by hand.
 A striker can check with referee for count of continuous pots of same ball.
 If a ball touches another ball on spot then, the ball is not considered to be on spot even though it
hasn’t moved.
 An object ball not spotted correctly by the player cannot be raised as a fault by referee in any
case.
Limitations Of Cannons
A maximum of 75 consecutive cannons are allowed for a striker. The referee has to call out for last five
after the player reaches count of 70. In case the referee misses to make note then, the last five cannons
will be counted from the moment the referee announces.
Alternately, the player can also know the number of cannons upon request.

Limitations To Hazards
Just like limitations to consecutive cannons, a player can make only 15 consecutive hazards. The player
and referee rule applies here also. In case the referee misses to announce for last five hazards, the
player will get additional five chances from the moment referee announces. Similarly, player can also
make request to know the count of continuous hazards.
If the non-striker’s ball is off the table in his last stroke of a turn, it will be placed on spot of baulk-line or
right corner of D.

Ball on Edge of a Pocket

 If a ball is pocketed without being hit or doesn’t touch a ball in the process is put back on the
table while the striker gets score for the stroke played.
 In case, the ball is hit by another one and is pocketed while there is no faulty stroke then, all the
balls are replaced and either same stroke is played or different stroke upon discretion of the
player.
 In case, it happens to be a foul then also all balls are placed back and the turn moves to next
player.
 If the ball balances on edge for a while and then falls off later, it is counted as pocketed and not
replaced back on table.

Ball Moved By Other Than Striker

A ball moved by Striker’s partner or any other person at the table is repositioned to most probable place
that referee thinks. The same rule doesn’t apply if the ball has moved due to defective table surface.
No players are penalised when balls are disturbed by referee.

Touching Ball
It is referee’s responsibility to shout for a touching ball. In such situation, red is placed on the sport and
not-striker’s ball is placed in Centre spot.
Another instance is when a cue-ball is touching an object ball just before the striker is about to play his
stroke, the referee can pause the game and adjust the ball for satisfaction.
Fouls
Given below are some of the fouls made by striker/partner/opponent player during course of the game.
 Striking a ball other than the cue-ball
 Striking the cue-ball more than once during a stroke
 Striking when any ball is not at rest
 Striking when both feet are off the floor
 Playing out of turn
 Playing improperly from in-hand, including the opening stroke
 Playing the cue-ball directly into a pocket, or off a shoulder of the pocket
 When in-hand with no object ball out of baulk (running a coup)
 Playing a jump shot
 Making a push stroke
 Causing a ball to be forced off the table
 Making more than fifteen consecutive hazards
 Making more than seventy-five consecutive cannons
 Touching a ball or ball marker in play
 Striking before the referee has completed the spotting of a ball
 Playing with a non-standard cue
 Using a ball off the table for any purpose
 Using any object to measure gaps or distance

Outcomes Of a Foul
The referee calls a foul and the player in strike has to stop playing immediately. If the player continues to
play even after the call then, the penalty is much higher.
The striker doesn’t get any points in a foul even though an object ball is potted in faulty stroke. The ball
is placed back on the table in its original position.
Every foul carries a penalty of two points. Suppose the referee or opponent player doesn’t call for a foul
then, it is forgiven.
A miss is also a type of foul where the cue-ball is pocketed directly without touching any ball on table. It
may hit cushion and go into pocket as well. Two points are added to opponent’s score and the next miss
is called foul.
Billiards - Variants
Apart from English Billiards, the other variants are Snooker, and Pool. After knowing and have played
Billiards, Snooker could be easier to understand. In Pool, the balls have stripes and dots with numbers
on it. These two sports will be discussed as separate tutorials.
In a doubles game, the order of play is decided by stringing and cannot be changed during course of the
game. The partners can confer during course of the game though.
Use of Ancillary Equipment
The striker owns responsibility to all the rests and additional equipment owned and used during the
game unless they are taken from the referee or lying at the table.
The player is not penalised for any fouls committed due to faulty ancillary equipment provided by the
referee. In such cases, the stroke made is ruled out and all the equipment involved in faulty stroke are
replaced immediately.

REFERENCES:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pool_(cue_sports)
http://www.thebilliardshop.com/history-of-pool-and-billiards
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cue_sports#Equipment
https://electronics.howstuffworks.com/billiard-table1.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billiard_table
http://www.basicbilliards.com/equipment.php
https://www.tutorialspoint.com/billiards/how_to_play_billiards.htm