Pool (cue sports)

Pool is the name given to a series of cue sports played on a billiard table. The table has six pockets along the rails, into which balls are shot.^[1]^[2] Of the many different pool games, the most popular include: eight-ball, blackball, nine-ball, ten-ball, seven-ball, straight pool, one-pocket, and bank pool. Eight-ball is the most frequently played discipline of pool, and it is often thought of as synonymous with "pool".^[3]

The generic term pocket billiards is sometimes also used, and favored by some pool-industry bodies, but is technically a broader classification, including games such as snooker, Russian pyramid, and kaisa, which are not referred to as pool games. There are also hybrid games combining aspects of both pool and carom billiards, such as American four-ball billiards, bottle pool, cowboy pool, and English billiards.

^ "The Official Website for the Governing Body of Pool". WPA-Pool.com. Sydney, Australia: World Pool-Billiard Association (WPA). 2011. banner, copyright notice, etc. Archived from the original on 11 October 2007. Retrieved 4 November 2011. "Pool billiards" is sometimes hyphenated and/or spelled with a singular "billiard". The WPA itself uses "pool-billiard" in its logo but "pool-billiards" in its legal notices. The organization compounds the words to result in an acronym of "WPA", "WPBA" having already been taken by the Women's Professional Billiards Association. Normal English grammar would not hyphenate here, and the term is actually a Germanism.
^ Game Rules for… Six-pocket. Amityville, New York: U.S. Billiards, Inc. c. 1970. A general rules booklet on pool games in general, including eight-ball, nine-ball and several others.
^ "History of Snooker and Pool". Sky HISTORY TV channel. Archived from the original on 24 July 2021. Retrieved 6 April 2022.