Carom billiards
Carom billiards, sometimes called carambole billiards, is the overarching title of a family of cue sports generally played on cloth-covered, billiard tables. In its simplest form, the object of the game is to score or "counts" by "" one's own off both the opponent's cue ball and the on a single shot. The invention as well as the exact date of origin of carom billiards is somewhat obscure but is thought to be traceable to 18th-century France. There is a large array of carom billiards disciplines. Some of the more prevalent today and historically are  (chronologically by apparent date of development): straight rail, one-cushion, balkline, three-cushion and artistic billiards. Carom billiards is popular in Europe, particularly France, where it originated. It is also popular in Asian countries, including Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Vietnam, but is now considered obscure in North America, having been supplanted by pool in popularity. The Union Mondiale de Billard (UMB) is the highest international governing body of competitive carom billiards. Etymology. The word "carom", which simply means any strike and rebound, was in use in reference to billiards by at least 1779, sometimes spelled "carrom". Sources differ  on the origin. It has been pegged variously as a shortening of the Spanish and Portuguese word "carambola", or the French word "carambole", which are used to describe the red object ball. Some etymologists have suggested that "carambola", in turn, was derived from a yellow-to-orange, tropical Asian fruit also known in Portuguese as a "carambola" (which was a corruption of the original name of the fruit, "karambal" in the Marathi language of India), also known as star fruit. But this may simply be folk etymology, as the fruit bears no resemblance to a billiard ball, and there is  no direct evidence for such a derivation. In modern French, the word "" means 'successive collision', currently used mainly in reference to or shots in billiards, and to multiple-vehicle car crashes. Equipment. Table. The billiard table used for carom billiards is a pocketless version, and is typically . Most cloth made for carom billiard tables is a type of baize that is typically dyed green, and is made from 100% worsted wool with no nap, which provides a very fast surface allowing the balls to travel with little resistance across the table . The slate bed of a carom billiard table is  often heated to about 5 °C (9 °F) above room temperature, which helps to keep moisture out of the cloth to aid the balls rolling and rebounding in a consistent manner, and generally makes a table play faster. A heated table is required under international tournament rules. It is an especially important requirement for the games of three-cushion billiards and artistic billiards, and even local billiard halls often have this feature in countries where carom games are popular. Heating table beds is an old practice. Queen Victoria (1819–1901) had a billiard table that was heated using zinc  tubes, although the aim at that time was chiefly to keep the then-used ivory balls from warping. The first use of electric heating was for an 18.2 balkline tournament held in December 1927 between Welker Cochran and Jacob Schaefer Jr. "The New York Times" announced it with fanfare: "For the first time in the history of world's championship balkline billiards a heated table will be used ..." Balls. The three standard balls in most carom billiards games consist of one white cue ball, a second yellow cue ball and a third, red object ball. Historically, the second cue ball  was white with red or black spots to differentiate it; both types of ball sets are permitted in tournament play. The balls are significantly larger and heavier than their pool or snooker counterparts, with a diameter of , and a weight ranging between with a typical weight of . Billiard balls have been made from many different materials throughout the history of the game, including clay, wood, ivory, plastics (including early formulations of celluloid, Bakelite, and crystalate, and more modern phenolic resin, polyester and acrylic), and even steel. The dominant material from 1627 until the early- to mid-20th century was ivory. The  search for a substitute for ivory use was not for environmental or animal-welfare concerns but based on economic motivation and fear of danger for elephant hunters. It was in part spurred on by a New York billiard table manufacturer who announced a prize of $10,000 for a substitute material. The first viable substitute was celluloid, invented by John Wesley Hyatt in 1868, but the material is volatile and highly flammable, sometimes exploding during manufacture. Cues. Carom billiard cues have specialized refinements making them different from cues used in other cue sports. Carom cues tend to be shorter and  lighter overall, with a shorter , a thicker and , a wooden joint (in high-end examples), and wood-to-wood joint. They have a sharply conical , and a smaller diameter as compared with pool cues. Typical carom cues are in length and in weight – lighter for straight rail, heavier for three-cushion – with a tip in diameter. These dimensions make the cue significantly stiffer, which aids in handling the larger and heavier balls used in carom billiards. It also acts to reduce (sometimes called "squirt"), which is displacement of the cue ball's path away from the parallel line formed by  the cue stick's direction of travel. It is a factor that occurs every time is employed, and its effects are magnified by speed. In some carom games, deflection plays a large role because many shots require extremes of side-spin, coupled with great speed; this is a combination typically minimized as much as possible, by contrast, in pool. History of games. Straight rail. Straight rail is thought to date to the 18th century, although no exact time of origin is known. The object of straight rail is simple: one point, called a "count", is scored each time a player 's cue ball makes contact with both object balls (the second cue ball and the third ball) on a single . A win is achieved by reaching an agreed upon number of counts. At straight rail's inception there was no restriction on the manner of scoring. However, the technique of "crotching", or freezing two balls into the corner where the rails meet—the "crotch"—vastly increasing counts, resulted in an 1862 rule which allowed only three counts before at least one ball had to be driven away. Techniques continued to develop which increased counts greatly despite the crotching prohibition, especially the  development of a variety of "" techniques. The most important of these, the "", involves the progressive nudging of the object balls down a rail, ideally moving them only a small amount on each count, keeping them close together and positioned at the end of each stroke in the same or near the same configuration such that the nurse can be replicated again and again. Straight rail is still popular in Europe, where it is considered a fine practice game for both balkline and three-cushion billiards. Additionally, Europe hosts professional competitions known as "pentathlons" in which straight rail is featured as  one of five billiards disciplines at which players compete, the other four being 47.1 balkline, cushion caroms, 71.2 balkline, and three-cushion billiards. Straight rail was played professionally in the United States from 1873 to 1879, but is uncommon there today. Balkline. In 1879, a variant called the "champion's game" or "limited-rail" was introduced with the specific intent of frustrating the rail nurse. The game employed diagonal lines at the table's corners to regions where counts were restricted. Ultimately, however, despite its divergence from straight rail, the champion's game simply expanded the dimensions of the balk  space defined under the existing crotch prohibition which was not sufficient to stop nursing. Balkline succeeded the champion's game, adding more rules to curb nursing techniques. In the balkline games, the entire table is divided into rectangular balk spaces, by drawing pairs of balklines lengthwise and widthwise across the table parallel from each rail. This divides the table into nine rectangular balkspaces. Such balk spaces define areas of the in which a player may only score up to a threshold number of points while the are within that region. Additionally, rectangles are drawn where each balkline meets a rail , called "anchor spaces", which developed to stop a number of nursing techniques that exploited the fact that if the object balls straddled a balkline, no count limit was in place. For the most part, the differences between one balkline game to another is defined by two measures: the spacing of the balklines and the number of points that are allowed in each balk space before at least one ball must leave the region. Generally, balkline games and their particular restrictions are given numerical names indicating both of these characteristics; the first number indicated either inches or centimeters depending on the  game, and the second, after a dot or a slash, indicates the count restriction in balk spaces, which is always either one or two. For example, in "18.2 balkline", one of the more prominent balkline games and of US origin, the name indicates that balklines are drawn 18 inches distant from each rail, and only two counts are allowed in a balk space before a ball must leave. By contrast, in "71.2 balkline", of French invention, lines are drawn 71 centimeters distant from each rail, also with a two-count restriction for balk spaces. In its various incarnations, balkline was  the predominant carom discipline from 1883 to the 1930s, when it was overtaken by three-cushion billiards and pool. Balkline is still popular in Europe and the Far East. One-cushion. One-cushion carom, or simply cushion carom, also arose in the late 1860s as another alternative to the repetitive play of straight rail, inspired by an early variant of English billiards. The object of the game is to score cushion caroms, meaning a carom off of both object balls with at least one rail cushion being struck before the hit on the second object ball. One-cushion carom is  still popular in Europe. Three-cushion. In three-cushion carom, the object is to carom off both object balls with at least three being contacted before the contact of the cue ball with the second object ball. Three-cushion is a very difficult game. Averaging one point per is professional-level play, and averaging 1.5 to 2 is world-class play. An average of one means that for every turn at the table, a player makes 1 point and misses once, thus making a point on 50% of his or her shots. Wayman C. McCreery of St. Louis, Missouri, is  credited with popularizing the game in the 1870s. At least one publication categorically states he invented the game as well. The first three-cushion billiards tournament took place 14–31 January 1878, in St. Louis, with McCreery a participant and Leon Magnus the winner. The high run for the tournament was just 6 points, and the high average a 0.75. The game was infrequently played, with many top carom players of the era voicing their dislike of it, until the 1907 introduction of the Lambert Trophy. By 1924, three-cushion had become so popular that two giants in other billiard disciplines  agreed to take up the game especially for a challenge match. On 22 September 1924, Willie Hoppe, the world's balkline champion (who later took up three-cushion with a passion), and Ralph Greenleaf, the world's straight pool title holder, played a well advertised, multi-day, to 600 . Hoppe was the eventual winner with a final score in of 600–527. Three-cushion billiards retains great popularity in parts of Europe, Asia, and Latin America, and is the most popular carom billiards game played in the US today. UMB, as the governing body of the sport, had been staging world  three-cushion championships since the late 1920s. Artistic billiards. In artistic billiards players compete at performing 76 preset shots of varying difficulty. Each set shot has a maximum point value assigned for perfect execution, ranging from a 4-point minimum for lowest level difficulty shots, and climbing to an 11-point maximum for shots deemed highest in difficulty level. There is a total of 500 points available to a player. Each shot in an artistic billiards match is played from a well-defined position (in some venues within an exacting two millimeter tolerance), and each shot must unfold in an  established manner. Players are allowed three attempts at each shot. In general, the shots making up the game, even 4-point shots, require a high degree of skill, devoted practice and specialized knowledge to perform. World title competition first started in 1986 and required the use of ivory balls. However, this requirement was dropped in 1990. The highest score ever achieved in competition overall is 427 set by Walter Bax on 12 March 2006, at a competition held in Deurne, Belgium, beating his own previous record of 425. The game is played predominantly in western Europe, especially in France, Belgium  and the Netherlands. In popular culture. The game appears in the films "Le Cercle Rouge" (1970), " The Hustler" (1961), "Deadfall" (1993) and many French films. It is also played in the television show "The Rifleman", S4E10, by Mark Twain on a visit to North Fork (1961).