Billiards

Is Billiards Going to be Your Game?

When you decide to take up cue sports as a hobby at home then one of the first things to think about is which of the three main variants you want to take up. Billiards, pool and snooker are the three different games in question, although you may hear pool and the game of billiards used interchangeably in places such as the US. Here we will concentrate on which is sometimes called Carom or Classic Billiards. In this game you only need 3 balls, a fairly big table and a way of keeping the score. Some tables come without pockets. This means that they can’t be used for pool or snooker, so you need to be pretty sure that you are going to play billiards before buying one of these. In other cases there would be no problem switching between the three games on your table. There are different types of billiard games but the general idea is all of them is to use your ball to hit off the other two which are on the table. Some variations on the the theme give you points for pocketing one or more of the balls – notably English Billiards – which on others this is not a feature and as stated earlier not all tables even have pockets. Another type of cue sport which is extremely difficult to play to a high level but which may provide fun for amateurs is Artistic Billiards. There are 76 shots which have to be carried out and there are different points for each one according to the level of difficulty. If you are going to be playing at home as a hobby this is a good way to increase your skills and shot making ability but it will take you a lot of patience to get past the first few.