Billiards ...

 

 

As per the myth saying, the origin of Billiards is associated with sixteenth century pawn broker called William Kew. He just put down three different balls and started pushing with a yard measurement stick. Hence the game initially termed as Billyard as Bill Kew started playing with a yard stick. Similarly, Cue was initially used to call as Kew. But we are not going to past, we will start from few decades back.

 

Changes are major part of life and the game has also changed a lot. Even in the past three to five decades, many changes have been seen in the game. The era in India when Sir Wilson Jones and Michael Ferreira ruled the world of green baize, they had more stress on In-offs rather than potting, used to play in-offs, long Jennies, short Jennies, cannons and in very odd situations they used to pot the red when almost no other option left on the table. But now, in the era of Geet to Pankaj, the game has moved from "D" to Spot. The game is now fast as the players are building breaks on Top Table using pots and cannon at most, and now in-offs are left for recovery shots only.

 

But this game has always maintained a class, and the beautiful part which comes out from billiards is technique, style, control, consistency and the most important concentration.

 

Billiards is a game of three balls, the red and two white balls [now one white has changed into yellow]. The red is placed on the spot a.k.a Black Spot in Snooker. Both the players get one white ball which remains as their cue ball for their visits on the table. In the opening shot, the first player plays from the "D" and remain on table till he accomplishes as many legal shots with one red ball only. During this visit, the second white ball remains with the other player and he just wait for his turn. Once the visit of one player ends, the other player starts from "D" with his hand ball i.e. cue ball and start playing as many in-offs, cannons, pots whatever or simply we can say, as many as legal shots and gets point for every legal shot. The points are summarized as:

  • In-off from Red – 3 points

  • In-off from white – 2 points

  • Cannon – 2 points

  • Red Pot – 3 points

  • White Pot – 2 points

  • In-off after Cannon in a single shot (if cue ball strikes red at first) 2+3 = 5

  • In-off after Cannon in a single shot (if cue ball strikes white at first) 2+2 = 4

Rest all the details about the game is available in the Rules Section.

 

 

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Last modified: Saturday January 23, 2010 23:58:24 +0530