Is It Billiards or Pool?
What's the difference between billiards and pool? There is a hierarchy of categories of which pool (also known as “pocket billiards”) is a subcategory. The main category is called “cue sports,” which includes the subcategories of billiards and snooker (the most popular game in Great Britain). While snooker has no subcategories, billiards does.
Billiards can be broken down into two subcategories: pool, which is played on tables with six pockets, a cue ball, and with up to fifteen object balls; and carom billiards, which is played on tables with no pockets, and three balls, usually one white, one red, and one yellow. By far, the most popular game played in the United States is pool. Although you will read a little about snooker in this book, the main focus is to teach you how to play pool.
The word “pool” has stirred quite a bit of confusion over the years in reference to billiard games. The original meaning of the word “pool” is the collective monetary bet (or wager) placed by a group of players. The pool (or “pot”) is the money put up by the players and awarded to the winner of a game.
The British created a betting system in the nineteenth century in reference to one of many billiard games. They called it “Life Pool.” In this game, the object was to pocket as many of your opponent's balls as possible. Each pocketed ball was referred to as a lost “life.” A player was out after he had lost three lives. This game later evolved into the popular British billiard sport called “snooker.”
To add to the confusion the term “poolroom” originally had nothing to do with billiards. A poolroom was a place where people gathered to place off-track bets on horse races. Because the bets were referred to as a “pool,” the betting establishments were referred to as “poolrooms.”
Fact
The reference to these early gambling and billiard rooms became so repugnant that the use of the word “pool” in advertising in the State of New York was outlawed from 1911 to 1931. The name “pocket billiards” was invented in an effort to avoid breaking the law by using the word “pool.”
Many off-track betting-establishment owners installed billiard tables in the poolrooms for the slow periods between races. As a result, poolrooms eventually became synonymous with degenerates, gambling, fighting, and drinking — an association that would take years to shed. Billiard enthusiasts made every attempt to clean up the reputation of the sport by using the term “billiard parlor” for legitimate gaming establishments.
