About

Welcome to my blog!

I created this blog in late November 2023 as a means of consolidating the rules of different niche cue-sports under a single website.

It started when I went into a deep-dive reading the various cue sports articles and noticing how many of them had very little info. Then, when I tried further research on those cue sports, I'd either find untranslated non-English pages, or various forum posts in forgotten corners of the internet.

The goal with this is then to provide a more or less standardised view of the various games, providing a standardised layout graphic to show how they are set up, and try to explain the rules in a language that is as clear and precise as I can so that it's understandable (at least to myself).

I hope this blog proves a useful resource to anyone who comes across it in the future :)

What is a cue sport?

Cue sports are any sport played with a cue.

Well, ok there's a little more to it than that.

You've probably seen those games that some people play in bars and on TV, where people knock colourful balls around with a long stick. Those are cue sports

Cue sports (also known as Billiards) generally fall into two different major categories: Carom Billiards and Pocket Billiards.

Carom Billiards

Also known as Carom or Carambole, are a style of billiards played on a table without any pockets (holes).

They are more often than not point scoring games, where certain types of shots award the active player a certain amount of points.

The most popular carom disciplines (to my knowledge) are Three-Cushion and Five-Pin, so named after their distinguishing features, hitting at least three cushions before hitting another ball, and toppling five pins to gain points respectively.

Pocket Billiards

Pocket Billiards, are the style of billiards that feature tables with pockets (holes/pots).

The object of the various different styles of pocket billiards is to shoot balls into those pockets.
Depending on the given variant, the act of pocketing a ball either earns you points or gets you closer to victory. The most popular variants of Pocket Billiards are Eight-Ball, Nine-Ball, and Snooker. A notable mention goes to Russian Pyramids, which while being less known internationally, is still a fine example of a Pocket Billiards game.

Pool games are a sub-genre of Pocket Billiards, named after the historical use of a betting pool won by whichever player won the game. Most Pool games make use of a Money Ball, which is a special ball that either wins or loses you the game if pocketed under certain circumstances.

Hybrid Games

Some billiards disciplines also hybridise these two styles, combining the means of scoring points from both disciplines. Most of the game on this blog usually fall into this category.