The first player to reach the agreed number of points is the winner. A player shoots until he fails to pocket a ball or fouls. If this contact point is struck with the cue ball then the object ball will find the pocket that it was targeting. Welcome to Basic Billiards where we will teach you the basics of how to play pool so you can have fun and win tournaments! If you've ever wondered what a professional pool or professional billiards player makes for their average salary, you might be surprised that they can make a very decent living if they are successful. We would like to make note that there are many variations to what happens when players scratch in Billiards. In football you run your hardest and kick your hardest, and few spectators are much the wiser; and a nervous man can always hit hard at golf off the tee and through the green, for as he has not got to think of strength, he is less likely to fidget and foozle the ball. A man who foozles his drive and slices his approach, but who is nevertheless always down in two strokes after he has got on the putting-green, if not in one, is very hard to beat except his opponent is a really good player.

3. Keep your eyes on the contact point you want to hit all the way as you get down on shot. A good drill to get the hang of this phenomenon is to place a coin hanging just a hair off the side cushion of the pool table. There are limits to what shots can be made playing pool. Billiards involves playing with three balls where one of them is red, one is yellow and the other white. Traditionally, Billiards has been a blanket term that refers to any kind of sport that involves using a cue. Pool involves a table with six pockets. Both billiards and pool can be further classified into cue games, which is one of the main similarity between the two. Penalties are assessed for fouls-i.e., violations of certain rules-including pocketing the cue ball ("scratching"), failing to hit any ball with the cue ball, causing the cue ball to strike first a ball that is not on, and pocketing two balls (other than two reds) on the same stroke. Most of the time when the cue ball makes contact with another ball it won’t hit the center of the cue ball, but a part of the side of the cue ball.

When playing at a nonred ball, the player must designate which ball is "on" (the target), although the player need not specify the intended pocket for the ball. The game arose, presumably in India, as a pastime for soldiers in the 1870s. Snooker is played with 22 balls, made up of one white ball (the cue ball); 15 red balls, valued at 1 point each; one yellow, 2 points; one green, 3; one brown, 4; one blue, 5; one pink, 6; and one black, 7. Players try to pocket first the red and then the nonred balls, scoring one point for each red and the number value of the others. In play, the object is to stroke the cue ball so that it hits the two object balls in succession, scoring a carom, or billiard, which counts one point. There are three ways of scoring: (1) the losing hazard, or loser, is a stroke in which the striker’s cue ball is pocketed after contact with another ball; (2) the winning hazard, or pot, is a stroke in which a ball other than the striker’s cue ball is pocketed after contact with another ball; (3) the cannon, or carom, is a scoring sequence in which the striker’s cue ball contacts the two other balls successively or simultaneously.

Officially, there are three billiards sports: pool, carom, and snooker. Snooker is a cue sport that originated in the latter half of the 19th century. The table size of the pool game is three and a half feet by seven feet. Generally, people made pool balls with plastic or some stone. Once shaped, nothing can alter this plastic. Now that you have an idea of how to find the contact point, what is billiards there are a few practical steps you can use to make sure you know how to aim down on the shot. I have heard it said that Goethe used to go to the top of a tower every day in order to accustom himself to look down without growing giddy. This means that you will have to hit the cue ball into a pocket while hitting the 8 Ball in at the same time to lose. Some things to keep in mind is that when aiming the cue ball at the contact point on the object ball is that using the center of the cue ball as an aiming point will only work with straight in shots. Only by aiming a piece of the cue ball that will hit the coin at that particular angle will you be able to move the coin.