The pockets (one at each corner, and one in the center of each long rail) provide targets (or in some cases, hazards) for the balls.
Carom games, especially three-cushion, are intensely popular in many parts of Europe, Asia and the Pacific, and Latin America.
In former times, extremely complicated and difficult carom games such as 18.2 balkline were played in world championship matches by players whose skill at very fine manipulation of the balls in nurse shots was so great that the serious playing field often consisted of only 4 major players for decades at a time.
The carom world opened up in the latter half of the 20th century and grew to its current level of much broader international competition with the rise of three-cushion billiards, which had more action, simpler rules and easier basic play, but more difficult true mastery due to the elimination of nurse shots.
[2] Pocket tables are known from the earliest days of billiards, being adaptations of lawn holes and croquet-style hoops to the indoor version of the game.
Today, numbered stripes and solids are preferred in most of the world, though the British-style variant (known as blackball) uses simplified colours.
The slate beds of profession-grade carom tables are usually heated to stave off moisture and provide a consistent playing surface.
[7][8] The beds and cushions of all kinds of billiard-type tables (carom, pool, and snooker) are covered with a tightly-woven cloth called baize, generally of worsted wool, although wool-nylon blends are common and some 100% synthetics are in use.
The cloth plays faster because it is smoother, thinner, more tightly-woven, and less fuzzy, providing less friction, thus allowing the balls to roll farther across the table bed.
Billiard cloth has traditionally been green for centuries, representing the grass of the ancestral lawn game.
Today, billiard cloth is available in a wide array of colours, with red, blue, grey, and burgundy being very common choices.
In recent years, cloth with dyed designs has become available, like sports, university, beer, motorcycle and tournament sponsor logos.
The principal difference is that the vast majority of pool tables encountered by the general public (i.e. in taverns and average pool halls) have cloth that is considerably thicker, coarser and slower, with the result that average recreational players have little understanding of the finer points of the effects of fast cloth on the game, and tend to shoot too hard when playing on better-equipped tables.
In internationally standardized games such as nine-ball and eight-ball, the apex ball of the rack (the ball furthest from the racker, pointing toward the end of the table from which the break shot will be taken) is placed on the foot spot, a spot that is at the intersection of the lateral middle of the racking end of the table, known as the foot string, and the table's longitudinal center, known as the long string); the game-winning ""money ball" is in the center of the rack.
The butt end of the cue is of larger circumference and is intended to be gripped by the player's shooting hand, while the cue shaft is narrower, usually tapering to a 10 to 15 mm (0.4 to 0.6 in) rigid terminus called a ferrule, where a leather tip is affixed to make final contact with balls.
Some are designed with modern materials (e.g. fiberglass or graphite carbon fibre reinforcements) and techniques (including vibration damping) in ways similar to high-end golf clubs.
Chalk, which comes in hard, dyed, paper-wrapped cubes, must be periodically applied to the tip of the cue during every game to prevent miscuing, especially when attempting to impart spin to the ball.
Many skilled pool players prefer to shoot with a snooker-sized tip, but few professionals do so, including the former snooker pros who have long dominated women's nine-ball.
Carom cues usually have a wood-to-wood joint, with a delicate threaded wooden pin, on the principle that this produces a better feel and weight balance, while pool cues often have a metal joint and pin, since pool games tend to involve considerably more force, necessitating reinforcement.
In the extreme carom discipline known as artistic billiards, a master practitioner may have 20 or more cues, of a wide range of specifications, each customised for performing a particular shot or trick.
A game increasingly popular among professionals is ten-ball, which is played with the same core rules, except that (in the internationally standardized version) the 10 ball cannot be pocketed early for an easy win.
[14] The World Pool-Billiard Association in concert with the Union Mondiale de Billard (UMB) and various other governing bodies have established worldwide rules for a number of carom billiards games, including three-cushion, straight rail and five-pins.
WPA and its regional and national affiliates like the Billiard Congress of America (BCA), professional tournament series like the International Pool Tour (IPT), and amateur leagues like the Valley National Eight-ball Association (VNEA, which despite its name is multi-national) and the American Poolplayers Association/Canadian Poolplayers Association (APA/CPA) all have different rulesets.
Nine-ball, on the other hand, has been the paramount gambling and tournament pool game for several decades, and has globally almost completely been standardised on the same rules in both professional and amateur play.