History Of Billiards

 

Billiards evolved from a lawn game similar to croquet played sometime during the 15th century in Northern Europe and probably in France. It was played indoors on 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" came from the French, either from the word "billiard," one of the wooden sticks, or "bille," a ball.
 
This game was first played with two balls on a table with six pockets with a hoop similar to a croquet wicket and an upright stick was used as a target. During the eighteenth century, the hoop and target gradually disappeared, leaving only the balls and pockets. Most of the information came from accounts of playing by royalty and other nobles. It was known as the "Noble Game of Billiards" since the early 1800's, but still there is evidence that people from all walks of life have played the game since its inception. In 1600, the game was familiar enough to the public that Shakespeare mentioned it in Anthony and Cleopatra.
 
After Seventy-five years, the first book of billiard rules remarked England as "few towns of note therein which hath not a public Billiard-Table."
 
In the late 1600's, the cue stick was developed. When the ball lay near a rail, the mace was inconvenient to use because of its large head. In that situation, 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 while women were forced to use the mace because it was felt that they were more likely to rip the cloth with the sharper cue.
 
Before tables were originally flat with vertical walls for rails and their only function was to keep the balls from falling off. Then 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.
 
After the 1800’s, billiard equipment improved rapidly all over England, because of the Industrial Revolution. The leather cue tip was well developed by 1823. Chalk was used to increase friction between the ball and the cue stick even before cues had tips. Visitors from England showed Americans how to use spin which explains why it is called "English" in the United States but nowhere else, while 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. By 1845 the vulcanization was used to make billiard cushions. By 1850 the billiard table had essentially evolved into its current form.
 
From about 1770’s until the 1920's, the dominant billiard game in Britain was English Billiards, played with three balls and six pockets on a large rectangular table. Before that time, there were no fixed table dimensions. The British billiard tradition game is carried on today primarily through the game of Snooker, a complex and colourful game combining offensive and defensive aspects and played on the same equipment as English Billiards but with 22 balls instead of three. Pocket billiards, most commonly referred to as pool, is the general term for a family of games played on a specific class of billiards table, having 6 receptacles called pockets (or "holes") along the rails, in which balls are deposited as the main goal of play. Cue sports that are played on pocketless tables are generally referred to as carom billiards.

 

Outside the cue sports industry, pocket billiards is almost exclusively referred to as "pool," due to a perhaps unfortunate association with the "poolrooms" where gamblers "pooled" their money to bet remotely ("off-track") on horse races. Because these venues often provided billiard tables, the term "pool" became synonymous with billiards, and though the original "pool" game was played on a pocketless table, the name stuck to pocket billiards as it gained in popularity. Though the traditional view of billiards as a refined and noble pastime did not blend well with the low-class connotations of gambling, the billiards industry's attempts to distance itself from the term "pool" beginning in the late 19th century were largely unsuccessful. There are hundreds of pocket billiards games. Some of the more well known include eight-ball, nine-ball, and The game of snooker is played on a table with pockets but is considered to be its own discipline and is governed internationally by the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association/World Snooker Association (professional) and International Billiards and Snooker Federation (amateur). There are also hybrid games combining aspects of both pocket and carom billiards, such as English billiards, American four-ball billiards and Pocket billiards is more popular than carom billiards in most countries of the world. Carom billiard games thrive in and Latin America, but pool (especially in the form of nine-ball and eight-ball) and snooker are gradually taking over as the most widely played cue games.

As a competitive sport, pocket billiards is 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 in turn represents all forms of cue sports in the International Olympic Committee.