Billiard table

A level, cloth-covered table with cushioned rails, designed for billiards and related cue sports. Its smooth surface and precise geometry shape how balls roll and rebound.

Cushion (billiards): A resilient rail lining that rebounds a billiard ball from the table’s edge. Its angle and rebound behavior define play along the table’s boundaries.
Pocket billiards: Cue sports in which players use a cue ball to pocket object balls. These games use tables with pockets, unlike carom billiards.
Ball–cushion collision: The impact between a billiard ball and a table cushion, which changes the ball’s velocity and spin. Cushion response determines rebound angles during bank shots.
Pool (cue sport): A group of pocket billiards games played on tables with six pockets. Pool helped standardize the familiar pocketed table design.
Carom billiards table: A pocketless billiard table used for carom games, typically with heated slate and close-fitting cushions. Its absence of pockets and specialized cushions contrast with pocket-table design.
Billiard cloth: The woven fabric covering a billiard table’s playing surface. Its weave and condition affect ball speed, spin, and directional consistency.
Carom billiards: Cue sports in which a player scores by making the cue ball contact object balls in sequence. Carom tables have no pockets and use cushions to shape scoring shots.
Rolling resistance: The force opposing an object’s rolling motion over a surface. Cloth and ball contact gradually reduce a moving ball’s speed.
Snooker: A cue sport played with 21 object balls on a large pocketed table. Snooker’s late nineteenth-century development established a distinctive large-table form.
Snooker table: A large pocketed table designed for snooker, with a broad playing surface and narrow pockets. Its dimensions and pocket openings differ from standard pool tables.

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