Billiards

• Equipment
• Games
• Status of the Game

Billiards is descended from a fourteenth- or early fifteenth-century northern European lawn game played with balls. By the middle of the fifteenth century the game was moved indoors to a raised table, sometimes covered in green cloth to simulate grass, with a low sideboard to keep the balls from falling off. Like the outdoor game, the indoor game had one or more “ports” (hoops) and “kings” (upright pegs) as targets. The player shoved balls across the table with a wooden stick (mace) that had a flat face on an enlarged end. When executing a shot, the player held the handle end of the mace approximately at shoulder height with the enlarged end resting on the table.
Two types of tables became standard by the late eighteenth century. A pocket billiards table is rectangular and has six pockets, one in each corner and one on either long side. Scoring is accomplished by pocketing balls. A carom billiards table has no pockets. Players score points by propelling one of the balls (the cue ball) into other balls in some rule-governed fashion.

Equipment

Early billiard tables were constructed of wood. Some were square, whereas others were rectangular, and sizes were not standard. Modern tables range from 1.8 to 3.6 meters long and are twice as long as wide. A problem with wooden tables is that the playing surface is prone to warping. In 1826 John Thurston of England constructed a billiards table with a slate surface. Slate is inexpensive, readily available, and very resistant to warping.Today’s quality tables have tops (beds) of slate 2.54 to 5 centimeters thick.
Players found that shots could be played by bouncing balls off the sideboards. Because the sideboards were often called “banks,” these shots are referred to as “bank shots.” Such shots were made easier when padded rails replaced the wooden sideboards.The earliest billiard balls were made of wood. Later the best balls were made of ivory. However, ivory was extremely expensive, prone to cracking and warping, and its use led to the slaughter of thousands of elephants during the early nineteenth century. In 1878 a U.S. chemist, John Wesley Hyatt, discovered that a compound of nitrocellulose, camphor, and alcohol could be molded into balls that are not affected by temperature and humidity. In 1870 Hyatt and his brother patented the process for making his compound, which they named “celluloid,” the world’s first commercial plastic.


The cue stick, a slender wooden rod, had largely replaced the mace by the end of the eighteenth century. By the early nineteenth century leather tips were applied to the cue sticks so that an off-center strike on a ball did not result in a “miscue,” wherein the ball skids off to the side rather than in the intended direction. Players also found that putting chalk on the tip of the cue lessened the chance of a miscue.With these innovations, players could purposely strike the cue ball slightly off center, thus imparting combinations of sidespin, topspin, or underspin, permitting more precise control of both the cue ball and the object balls.

Games

Modern billiards games come in four basic types. Carom billiards is played on a pocketless table with one red ball, one white ball, and one yellow (or white with two red or black spots on opposite sides) ball. Players score points by propelling their cue ball (either the white ball or the yellow or spotted ball) into the other two balls. By the late 1940s carom billiards faded in popularity in the United States in favor of pocket billiards games.
Snooker is played with twenty-two balls: the white cue ball, fifteen red balls worth one point each, and six numbered balls of different colors worth two through seven points. A player first attempts to pocket one of the red balls and then a numbered ball, which is then replaced on the table. If successful, the player shoots another red ball and so on. English billiards is played with a red ball, a white ball, and a white spotted ball and combines aspects of carom billiards with those of pocket billiards. The tables for these games are normally larger (up to 3.6 meters long) than other tables, and the balls, in turn, are smaller. Both games are much more common in Europe than in the United States.
Common varieties of pocket billiards include straight pool, 8-ball, and 9-ball. Straight pool is played with one white cue ball and fifteen numbered balls. Players attempt to pocket some agreed-upon number of balls (150 for tournament play). The first player reaching that number is the winner. Players must indicate where they intend to pocket a ball before shooting. Improperly pocketed balls are replaced on the table, and the player loses a turn. In 9-ball the balls are racked at one end of the table in a diamond shape with the 9 ball in the center of the diamond.The object balls must be pocketed in numerical rotation, with the player who pockets the 9 ball winning the game. The game of 8-ball is the most popular billiards game in the world and is played with a cue ball and fifteen object balls, numbered 1 through 15. One player must pocket balls of the group numbered 1 through 7, whereas the other player must pocket 9 through 15.The player who first pockets all of the balls in his or her group and then the 8 ball wins the game.

Status of the Game

The term pool is often used interchangeably with billiards, but during the nineteenth century, a “pool” was a group bet made on horse races in off-track betting parlors known as “poolrooms.” Billiards tables were often installed in poolrooms so that patrons could play between races.The term pool now refers to any of the several versions of pocket billiards.
World championships in billiards began in 1870. Now both men and women vie for national and world championships in several varieties of billiards. In the past people often stigmatized billiards as a pursuit of lowlifes, but now, with televised tournaments and tables in many homes, billiards is more popular than ever.