How to Play Billiards

Posted on July 28th, 2009 by aileen

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Billiards is a popular game among teenagers and adults. This game is said to be dominated by men, but is gaining popularity among women. If you want to play billiards, here are some points to remember.

Tips:

Arrange the balls. 1 set has 16 balls: 1 cue ball and 15 object balls. The cue ball is colored white and is used to strike the other balls. There are 2 groups of object balls, solids and stripes. Balls 9 to 15 have colored stripes, while the rest have solid colors. All balls are set in the middle of the table except for the cue ball.
Break the rack. Try to break the object balls with the cue ball. In 8-ball, when a solid ball enters a pocket, you will be hitting solids for the entire game. If you aren’t able to sink any, your opponent may choose which ball he likes. If he hits solids, you’ll be sinking stripes.
Try to sink balls as much as you can. Your opponent will have to wait until you miss or make an illegal shot. When you do, it’ll be your opponent’s turn.
The game ends once there are no more balls left on the table but the cue ball.

Facts:

There are several types of billiard games. Some of them are:
- Carom billiards is played on a pocket-less table. The rule is to hit 2 balls with the cue ball. There are 3 types of this game. They are straight, balkline and 3 cushion billiards
- Pocket billiards is the most popular billiard game. It’s also called pool game. The billiard table used for this game has a pocket on the middle of each of the longer side of the table and 4 corner pockets. Straight pool, snooker, 9-ball and 8-ball are pool games.
Snooker is often considered another type of billiards even though it’s played on a table with pockets.
In playing 8-ball, the player who finishes all his assigned balls gets to shoot the 8-ball. Before taking a shot, he needs to tell his opponent where he plans to sink the ball. If the ball sinks on the said pocket, that player wins, otherwise, it’s a foul.
There are 10 balls used when playing 9-ball, 9 object balls and 1 cue ball. Sink the lowest numbered ball on the table. When you sink the 9- ball, you win the game.

Playing billiards is a lot of fun. Practice the simple shots first. When you can already control your shots and sink balls, try to learn more trick shots.