Cue sports

Billiards balls.

Cue sports are games played with balls on a table. The table has rubber around the sides (called "cushions") around it to keep the balls on the table. It has cloth on it. Two or more people use sticks (called cues) to make one ball (the cue ball) hit other balls. There are lots of different cue sports. These include billiards, pool and snooker.

Pool is also sometimes called pocket billiards. The aim is to use the cue ball to knock other balls into "pockets" (called "potting"). These pockets are holes cut into the rubber cushions. When balls go into the pockets they drop down into nets. There are many different pool games. In "eight-ball", players must pot their eight balls before their opponent. In "nine-ball" the balls are numbered. They must be potted in numbered order. In "straight pool" players must pot a certain amount of balls.

Billiards is usually played with three balls, uses a table without pockets. The goal is to use the cue ball to hit one of the other two balls, then hit one or more of the cushions, and finally hit the second other ball. This is called a "carom". There are different billiards games. English Billiards is similar to the carom game, but the table has pockets.

Snooker, which is similar to pool, is played on a large (6 foot wide by 12 foot long) table, with small balls and small pockets, making the game very challenging. Snooker also uses more balls than pool.