How to play Billiards

The different variation of billiards has different rules. Thus, how to play billiards depends on the particular billiard variation you're actually playing.

Straight Billiards:
A player scores a point every time his ball makes contact with two other balls and can continue playing. Some players try to gather the balls in one corner so that they can score many points in the same shot.

Balkline Billiards:
Balkline is a variation of straight billiards in which the table is divided into eight sections. A player cannot gather the balls in one place to score points. It is a more challenging form of the straight game.

Three-cushion Billiards:
When playing this variation of billiards, the player has to make contact with two balls on the table while hitting the balls off the cushions on three sides of the table or hitting the cushions three times while the balls are in play.

Snooker:
In this game the balls must be pocketed in a certain order. The colored balls have to be pocketed using the cue ball, starting with the red ball. Each color ball carries a certain number of points. Once a player gets a red ball in the pocket, then he/she aims for another color and then back to red. The player keeps going until he/she cannot make a shot. The player with the most points wins.

Eight-Ball:
There are 16 balls, one of which is white, called the cue ball. The rest of the balls are numbered 1 through 15 and are either solid or striped. They are racked in a triangle formation and the player starts by using the cue ball to break the rack. The first ball that goes into a pocket determines which set of balls (striped or solid) the player will shoot at. To win the game a player must pocket all of his/her balls and then pocket the 8 ball without pocketing the cue ball at the same time.

Nine-Ball:
In this game only balls numbered from 1 to 9 are used. The object of the game is to pocket the balls in sequential order.

One Pocket Billiards:
Each player has a specific pocket into which he/she can shoot the balls. Each time a ball goes into the correct pocket, the player scores a point. A player continues playing until he/she misses a shot.

Bank Pool:
In this variation of the game, players must bank the ball off one of the cushions before it goes into the pocket.