What is the difference among Pool, Billiards and Snooker ??

Sachin Tendulkar. Hearing the name, the thing that comes to mind is 'GOD of Cricket'. Roger Federer. Tennis/Wimbledon is where you are transported to. Lionel Messi. A guy dribbling the football, making fool of the best of defenders. Pankaj Advani. A genius, with a cue stick in hand, standing next to a Pool table. Or is it a Snooker table? No, it's a Billiards table. Ahh.. Let's find out. 

Pool, Billiards and Snooker look almost the same on the face of it. A pair of sticks, a group of balls and a plush, exquisite green table. Collectively, they refer to a class of games known as Cue sports. Cue sports, invented around 15th century, were invented as the indoor versions of the outdoor games such as Golf, Croquet, Trucco. These outdoor games were prominent among the elite, the royalty and no surprise, even the Cue sports were the favourite time pass for the rich.

What are Cue Sports?

Cue sports, also called Billiard sports, are played with a Cue stick which is 57-59 inches in length, cue ball of 61.5 mm diameter and a table (size of  table and cue ball varies with the sport). 
The Cue sports are split into 3 major categories:

1. Carrom Billiards
2. Snooker
3. Pool

I. Carrom Billiards is played on a table with no pockets. Quite surprising, ain't it? It is played with just 3 balls (2 cue balls and 1 object ball) and the points are scored when the player's cue ball hits the other two balls in a single shot. The different varieties of Carrom Billiards, played across the world, are Balkline, Straightline rail, 3 cushion billiards.

Carrom Billiards

II. Snooker sports

English billiards and Snooker are the two main types of sports played over the snooker table. The snooker table is 11'8'' by 5'10'' in dimension and has 6 pockets.

What is the difference between Snooker and Billiards?

a) English Billiards (or simply Billiards), has 3 balls in a game. 2 are Cue balls (used by players) and 1 is Object ball (red in colour). Points are awarded when a player strikes his/her cue ball to hit both the object and the other cue ball. Potting any of the other 2 balls  (Winning Hazard) or one's own Cue ball (Losing hazard) also results in points, albeit the awards are different in each scenario.

b) Snooker, on the other hand, is played with 22 balls: 15 red balls, 6 colour balls (yellow, green, brown, blue, pink and black) and 1 cue ball (white).  The game starts with a player striking or potting any of the red ball (to avoid any foul). Once a red ball is potted, the rules mandate potting a colour ball, i.e. any of the yellow, green, brown, blue, pink and black ball. The potted colour ball is returned to the table at its original position. The game continues in this fashion; potting one red, then a colour, again red and so on until all the red balls are potted. The remaining coloured balls are then to be potted in the order of least to the most valuable ball i.e. Yellow -> Green -> Brown -> Blue -> Pink -> Black. The points are awarded based on the ball potted. Red ball is worth a point. Among the color balls, yellow gives the lowest advantage (2 points) while black yields the highest benefit of 7 points.

Snooker  - Initial placement of balls (Points mentioned as well)

III. Pool is played over a table with 6 pockets. The more common types of Pool sports are eight-ball, nine-ball, straight pool, bank pool and one-pocket. The 8-ball pool is one of the most popular pool-sport played across the world. The objective is to pot all the stripes or solids and finally the black ball before the opponent.

8 ball Pool rack

Coming to our original question, what does Pankaj Advani play? Well, he started his professional career with English Billiards in 2002, while it was only until 2012, that he turned a professional Snooker player. You will be glad to know that he is a 18 times World Champion. He has even achieved a hat-trick of hat-tricks in English Billiards.

Nerd Notes

1. Though Green colour was incorporated to emulate the grass (as in Outdoor games), it serves one other purpose. Scientifically, green is the most soothing colour and less strenuous to the human eye, thereby prolonging the ability to play the sport
2. Billiards was the first sport for which the World championship was conducted (year was 1869)

Hope you liked the post. Wishing you and your family a very happy new year in advance !

Thanks for reading.

-Prakhar