Pocket billiards

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For other uses, see Pocket (billiards).

Pocket billiards is a sub-classification of the broader category of games known as cue sports. While "cue sports" or "billiards" can (depending upon the speaker) denote any game played on a form of cue sport table, pocket billiard games are played on a specific class of billiard table with pockets, or holes, along the rails, allowing the balls to be removed from play or to earn points for the player by driving them into these pockets. Pocketless billiard games are generally referred to as carom billiards, as a class.

Pocket billiards has become synonymous with "pool" and is almost exclusively referred to as "pool" in the United States but the original^{[citation needed]} "pool" game, skittle pool, was played on a pocketless table. The term "pool" comes from "poolrooms," where people gambled off-track on horse races. They were called poolrooms as money was "pooled" to determine the odds. Because such rooms commonly provided billiard tables, pool became synonymous with billiards, and eventually pocket billiards, by association. The billiards industry tried to distance itself from the term "pool" during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (largely unsuccessfully), due to the gambling connotations. The sport is now governed internationally by the World Pool-Billiard Association (WPA), which has national affiliates such as the US Billiard Congress of America (BCA), and which represents pocket billiards in the World Confederation of Billiard Sports which represents all forms of cue sports in the International Olympic Committee."

Pocket billiard games include but are not limited to eight-ball, nine-ball, straight pool, and one-pocket. The game of snooker is played on a table with pockets but is considered to be its own discipline of cue sport and is governed internationally by the World Snooker Federation. English billiards, like cowboy is a hybrid carom/pocket game.

Pocket billiards is more popular than carom billiards in most countries of the world. Carom billiard games thrive in Asia, Italy and Latin America, but pool (especially in the form of nine-ball and eight-ball) is gradually taking over as the cue sport of choice.

[edit] Equipment

Pocket billiards uses different equipment from carom billiards. Other than the table having pockets, the balls for pocket billiards are generally smaller and range from 2.25 inches in diameter to 2.375 inches in diameter. Carom billiard balls are generally 2.875 inches in diameter.^{[citation needed]} Modern cues are generally 58.5 inches long for pocket billiards while cues prior to 1980 where designed for straight pool and had an average length of 57.5 inches. Carom billiard cues are generally 56 inches long.^{[citation needed]}