Trick shot

Some, such as the World Snooker Trickshot Championship are purely exhibitions, with a panel of judges scoring subjectively to determine the winner.

Each player or team gets to select a given number of shots, generally eight or ten, and a winner is declared when one side is mathematically eliminated.

Trick Shot Magic, ESPN's annual artistic pool pro tournament, has been widely considered the televised version of the World Artistic Pool Championship, and it has held the highest ratings in televised cue sports competitions in the United States between 2000 and 2009.

Artistic pool similarly (see below) has a program of shots (three attempts each, in a sliding-scale point system), with precisely outlined parameters requirements.

However, many props can be used in trick shots including bottles, drinking glasses, baskets, coins, ball racks, cue tip chalk, and other billiards- and non-billiards-related equipment.

The British TV game show Big Break, which ran from 1991 to 2002, featured a round each week called "Virgo's Trick Shot".

Perhaps the most outlandish case would be in BBC Two's science fiction comedy TV series Red Dwarf, episode "White Hole", in which the character Dave Lister uses his pool-playing skills to play a trick shot at an astronomical level in order to save the ship, using a thermonuclear device as a "cue" and planetary bodies as "balls".

Another example might be the character Vince pocketing the nine-ball "on the snap" when asked to, in the film version of The Color of Money.

World Champion professional trick shot artist Mike Massey setting up a trick shot.
Potting three balls at once.
Trick shot World Champion Steve Davis potting a ball under a cloth.