billiards

billiards

1. any of various games in which long cues are used to drive balls now made of composition or plastic. It is played on a rectangular table covered with a smooth tight-fitting cloth and having raised cushioned edges

2. a version of this, played on a rectangular table having six pockets let into the corners and the two longer sides. Points are scored by striking one of three balls with the cue to contact the other two or one of the two
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Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Billiards

 

a game played with balls on a special table (known as a billiard table). Billiards is considered to have originated in India and China. In Europe it appeared in the 16th century, and in Russia, during the reign of Peter I. The table, covered with a felt cloth, has in its cushions six holes (pockets) with little net bags under them. Some billiard tables—for example, the French ones—do not have pockets. The game is played with three, five, or 16 balls (numbered from 1 to 15; the 16th ball does not have a number), made of elephant ivory or a composition substance. These are struck and pushed by a cue—a stick made of hard wood, approximately 1.5 m in length. In the USSR the billiard games which are widespread are “American” (in which the winning player is the one who is the first to pocket eight balls) and “Pyramid” (in which the winner is the player who is the first to make 70 points).

REFERENCES

Koriolis, G. Matematicheskaia teoriia iavlenii billiardnoi igry. Moscow, 1956. (Translated from French.)
Nauka i zhizn’, 1966, nos. 2, 3, 4, 6, 11.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.