Pool (cue Sports)

Pool (cue Sports)

Pool, also more formally known as pocket billiards (mostly in North America) or pool billiards (mostly in Europe and Australia), is the family of cue sports and games played on a pool table having six receptacles called pockets along the rails, into which balls are deposited as the main goal of play. Popular versions include eight-ball and nine-ball. An obsolete term for pool is six-pocket. Known players in the sports include Efren Reyes, Earl Strickland, Francisco Bustamante, Nick Varner, Wu Chia-ching, Ralf Souquet, Ronato Alcano, Daryl Peach, Johnny Archer, Mika Immonen among others.

In the United States, though the original "pool" game was played on a pocketless carom billiards table, the term later stuck to all new games of pocket billiards as the sport gained in popularity, and so outside the cue sports industry, which has long favored the more formal term pocket billiards, pool has remained the common name for the sport.

There are hundreds of pool games. Some of the more well known include eight-ball, nine-ball, ten-ball, straight pool, one-pocket and Crater Ball.

There are also hybrid games combining aspects of both pool and carom billiards, such as American four-ball billiards, cowboy pool and bottle pool.