billiards
Billiards [ ˈbɪljaʁt ], or game of billiards, is a game in which two people or two teams play against each other.
The cue is used to hit the billiard balls (often also called balls ) on a billiard table covered with billiard cloth. The player only hits the white ball ( game ball ) with the cue , which in turn can hit other balls ( object balls ). Today the balls are mostly made of a high-quality phenolic resin .
The German spelling Billard corresponds to the French origin. The French word bille denotes a small sphere, ball or marble .
There are up to 35 types of billiards. The most popular of these are pool , snooker , carom , bowling , Russian billiards and English billiards .
history
.jpg)
Origin of name
The origins of the term billiards are not clear. One story points to both billiards and the cue: The English pawnbroker Bill Kew - Kew and cue sound the same in English ( homophone ) - around 1550 with a wooden yard (at that time the name for an English measuring instrument) is said to target balls pounding the floor of his office. This could be the origin of the terms “bill's yard” and “cue”. Another possibility, given the much older occurrence of the word billiards in 1399, is the French word Bille with its possible meanings in German, "piece of wood" or "ball". A combination of the words Bille and Yard , which is sometimes assumed, would not be necessary, as many French words end in -ard .
Archetypes
Most current theories about the origins of billiards suggest that the game of billiards is related to other ball games such as cricket , croquet, and golf . From the 13th century there are references to ball games that were played in the open field and in which the balls were hit with a bat or stick. In order to be able to play the game in areas with mostly bad weather, the events were gradually moved to closed rooms and then finally to a table. Even if the playing area was significantly reduced as a result, the basic idea of the game remained the same. To prevent the balls from falling off the table, strips were attached to the edges. These first forms of ball game on a table included various chicanes such as goals, arches, cones and holes, whereby the balls were hit with the thick end of the stick, comparable to today's hockey . It is not clear whether the origins are in France or Great Britain. However, one of the earliest mentions of a pool table describes that the French King Louis XI. acquired such a table in 1470 from the cabinet maker Henri de Vigne.
16th to 18th century
From the middle of the 16th century, the game of billiards was already established in numerous royal houses in Europe and was part of social life. According to tradition, the game was played by Queen Mary of Scots and King Charles IX of France, among others . known. At the end of the 16th century, the first billiard tables reached America with the Spanish. Around the same time, the game was first mentioned by English writers. In Mother Hubberd's Tale by Edmund Spenser (published 1591) it says: "... With dice, with cards, with billiards far unfit ..." In Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare (1606) Cleopatra speaks: "Let it alone, let's to billiards. Come, Charmian. ”The first detailed description of a game of billiards and its distribution can be found in The Compleat Gamester by the English writer Charles Cotton in 1674. Cotton continued to describe in it that billiards was an extremely common game in ballrooms across Europe. Towards the end of the 17th century, the thinner end of the stick was used more and more to move the balls, which gradually led to the development of the cue to its present form. In the 18th century, the development of the game in Europe went in two directions. While in the course of the spirit of the French Revolution in France at the latest from the 1780s all obstacles and thus also the pockets disappeared from the table and today's carom was created, in England the hole billiards was further developed into the now known English billiards . James Beaufort mentions in the book An Epitome of Hoyle (1791) both the term carambole and the use of a red ball for a game with three balls.
19th century
Once in 1807, the Frenchman François Mingaud came up with the idea during his detention, apply a piece of leather on the queue tip also making Effet bumps were possible, made during the Industrial Revolution , the game of billiards in the 19th century rapid progress. A short time later, the leather tip was followed by the development of special billiard chalk to prevent the cue from slipping on the ball. In 1827, the English table maker John Thurston first presented a billiard table with a slate plate as a base (instead of the wooden plate previously used), which resulted in a greatly improved ball flow . It was also Thurston who introduced an innovation regarding the gangs. Until then, various materials such as cotton , horse hair or animal hide were used to cover the wooden strips , Thurston presented a gang with a rubber inside for the first time in 1835 . The problem of the temperature dependency of this material was first tried to combat with permanent heating or cooling. In 1845, Thurston applied for the patent for the ultimate solution when he used vulcanized rubber , an invention of Charles Goodyear in 1839. The billiard balls were now almost everywhere made of African ivory , which replaced the wood that had been used until then.
As a result of technical innovations, rule adjustments and regulations as well as the discovery of the monetary potential of the game of billiards, the first forms of player organization and tournament scenes occurred from 1850, beginning in England in the early 19th century . The challenge match later remained an indispensable and sometimes popular component, especially for the professionals. Long before the beginning of the 20th century, the first championships were held in tournament form. In Great Britain and the USA in particular, keen interest in the game of billiards began, which often attracted several thousand spectators to the salons and event halls.
Around 1880, all of the billiards that are popular today were established in their basic features. Later further developments led to new versions and sometimes new sub-variants.
The first milestones were the challenge matches between Michael Phelan and John Seereiter in Detroit in the four-ball in 1859 (an American version of English Billiards with 4 balls, the dominant discipline in the USA at the time), as well as between William Cook and John Roberts Sen. 1870 in London at English Billiards. In 1873 the first professional world championship in the pile-up variant Free Game took place in New York City . The first US pool championship followed in 1878; The venue was also New York.
While in the USA and Great Britain the impetus came largely from the professionals, the sport of billiards in continental Europe was shaped by the spirit of amateur sport at this time , also due to the influences of the French Revolution and the revitalized Olympic thought - albeit above all in the collision there were also European professionals and an extensive amateur landscape in the USA.
One last major change in terms of material took hold at the end of the 19th century, when the ivory used in the balls was replaced by synthetic resins . With the exception of the Billiard Artistique discipline, only balls made of high-quality phenolic resins are used for billiards today.
20th century
The amateur world championship in 1903 in Cadre 45/2 in Paris is today regarded as the first major event in continental Europe. The First World War and the associated long-term standstill of crashes in Europe not only brought the encounters between players from both continents to a standstill, but also two more or less separate lines - of course, also against the background that continental travel was still very time-consuming .
In the meantime, billiards had also become a movement in Asia - Japanese three- cushion players in particular had been in the USA since the early 20th century, and later also in Europe. The two world wars, the Great Depression of 1929 and the alcohol prohibition in the USA from 1919 to 1933 left their mark on billiards in Great Britain, mainland Europe, America and Asia ; especially with the professionals, whose existence depended directly on the paying viewer. An emerging crisis, particularly in the USA, but also in Great Britain, was exacerbated in the 1950s and 60s by the emergence of television, which initially stole the audience from players. However, pool billiards soon experienced a renaissance with the appearance of the movie Haie der Großstadt (1961), which sparked a new wave of enthusiasm for this variant in the USA. Together with the 1986 feature film The Color of Money , both films contributed to the enthusiasm for pool later in Asia and Europe. A new age of billiards in Great Britain dawned in the late 1960s when the BBC looked for a format to show viewers the superiority of color television - and chose snooker for this . The presence of American and British military garrisons in mainland Europe after the Second World War ensured, at least since the 1970s and 80s, that billiards and snooker were established there in addition to billiards.
With the fall of the Iron Curtain , another wave was set in motion, when especially pool, but also snooker, found their way to Eastern Europe and have since found more and more fans in this region.
You can still see the influences of politics and waves of emigration on the importance of the individual variants in different regions of the world, but with the onset of globalization in the 1990s and benefited by increasing digital networking, billiards is meanwhile in all parts of the world Representing the world - manifested by corresponding world, continental and national associations.
Playing technique
When performing the push, the forearm should remain straight and there should be a right angle (90 °) between the forearm and upper arm, when swinging only the elbow should be moved, similar to a clock pendulum, shoulder and wrist remain stiff (see photo) .
There are several thrusting techniques. First of all, a distinction must be made between an ideal elastic impact that hits the white ball exactly in the middle (continuation of a straight line ) and a spin impact (decentralized). The spin shot turns the white ball on and thus makes it possible to induce the ball to move in a certain way (for example, arc thrust) or to get a better position (for example, return movement). To a small extent, a negative spin is also carried over to the ball being played.
Follow-up / returns
If you hit the ball from the horizontal in the (vertical and horizontal) center, it is first pushed a little off the cue, then it slides over the cloth - depending on the strength of the spin. After a distance, depending on the material, it begins to roll due to the friction on the cloth. A shock that hits the white ball off-center causes the ball to rotate around its own axis. In addition to the momentum that determines the primary direction of travel, the ball is set in rotation. Depending on where the ball is hit with the cue, this has different effects:
- Above the middle
- The white ball will run after it after it has hit another ball in the center. This is why this impact is called a follower or running ball .
- Below the middle
- The white ball will run back to another ball after it has hit the center of the ball (hence this push is called a return or pull ball ) or slow down its course or - with the so-called stop ball - stay in exactly this position if the white ball hits the colored ball after it hits the colored ball has no forward or backward rotating energy.
Spin
In both cases mentioned, as well as in right and left-hand offset, almost all of the translational energy (the energy contained in the forward movement) is transferred to the hit ball, while the rotational energy contained in the game ball leads to the effect described. If the hit is not completely central, the translational energy is divided between the balls - in relation to the deviation of the point of attack from the center - and they run in different directions. The smooth tracking of the queue is important here. A short, choppy shot means that the spin only lasts for a short time and, before reaching the target ball, has passed into additional translational energy (backlash) or has been compensated by the friction (backlash). As long as the spin is effective, the ball does not roll its circumference on the cloth, but ideally slides over the cloth until it reaches the targeted ball.
- Right or left of center (side spin)
- The white ball will not return straight after hitting a gang. This side spin changes the angle to the side on which you hit the white ball.
- Particularly in the technical disciplines of carom (free game, cadre), this spin is used to correctly position the ball 2 that has been played. The rotation is transmitted when it hits - as between two connected gears - as a counter-effect and has a visible effect after touching a band (series play).
All these possibilities can be combined, for example to give the white ball a very specific direction after sinking another ball. This is the only way to achieve exact positions in order to continue the game.
You always get the highest hit probability if you hit the ball in the middle.
There are also head butts , which are used particularly in trick shots and in the art kick (today: Billard Artistique ), but also regularly in the technical disciplines of carom. Head butts ( Massé , Piqué ), for example, have the effect that the ball describes a clearly visible arc, first moves forwards and then backwards without any further ball or board contact, touches the same board or adjacent boards several times in succession or even lifts off the table top. The white ball is pushed from above at an angle of about 30 to 90 °. However, there are rules that limit these and other trick strokes, such as the pool jump .
Course of the game ball
The course of the game ball kicked without spin after the carom is 90 ° to the direction of the hit object ball (OB) if the OB is not hit in the middle.
For example, if the OB is hit just slightly offset from the center, so that he takes a path that deviates from the direction of play by a few degrees, the cue ball will run almost at a right angle to the direction of play (see graphic, left part). However, if the OB is hit only very weakly from the side, so that he takes a path almost at right angles to the direction of play, the kick ball will then continue to run almost in the direction of play (see graphic, right-hand part).
In this way, the course of the game ball can be influenced in numerous game situations and its exact placement for the next ball to be played can be achieved. In addition, the push can be performed with a follow-up spin (10:30 am - 1:30 am) or a return spin (4:30 a.m. - 7:30 a.m.) to influence the running distance of the game ball. The more the OB is hit, the more impact force is required to let the cue ball run correspondingly far, or the thinner the OB is cut, the less.
The drainage technique is the basic knowledge and the most important technique in pile-ups , especially with binding and three-cushion .
Game types
.jpg)
Pool
Pool is played with one cue ball ( the white one ) and 15 object balls ( the colored one ). There are seven halves, seven full plus the black eight . The naming refers to the type of coloring.
The cue ball is the only ball that can be played directly using the cue. The players take turns each one recording . The recording is over when the player could not properly punch a ball with his stroke.
The most popular subspecies of pool are 8-ball , 9-ball , 10-ball and 14/1 endless .
snooker
The principle of the game in snooker is to sink 15 red and 6 different colored balls ( the colored ones ) according to certain rules.
As in pool, only the white person may be touched with the cue, and the players take turns taking turns. However, the snooker table is a lot larger than the pool table, and the pockets are smaller and shaped with rounded instead of straight edges.
Collision
During collision, even Carom, is played with three balls, which usually have the colors red, white and yellow.
In contrast to pool or snooker, no balls are sunk into pockets and the table has no holes. Instead, the aim is to hit the other two balls with the cue ball according to certain rules.
The best-known variations are the free game , cadre , binding , three-cushion and billiard artistique
Cone billiards
In bowling billiards, the goal is to knock down as many pins as possible with the ball.
A smaller carom table measuring 180 × 90 centimeters is used as the gaming table . Five or nine cones are placed in the middle of the table. The game is played with three carom balls.
The most important variations of 5-cone billiards , 9-cone billiards and billiards bowling .
Russian billiards
Russian billiards is a variant of billiards that is particularly popular in Russia and the other CIS countries.
The game is played on a 12-foot table with 16 balls which, at 68 millimeters in diameter, are even larger than carom balls. A ball must therefore not be sunk into the 73 millimeter wide inlet of the corner pocket if the distance to one of the two sides of the pocket is more than 5 millimeters.
English billiards
The game is played on a 12-foot table with six pockets. Two players play against each other and each has their own cue ball, which is either white or yellow. The third ball on the table is red, and it's the object ball. The game combines elements of different types of play. For example, you can score points by sinking one of the other two balls, pitting your own with at least one ball after a crash, or hitting both other balls with your cue ball, as in a crash. These possibilities can be combined to get more points.
Multicolore
Multicolore is a French game of chance that combines elements of roulette with billiards and is offered in various games clubs called billiard cercles .
Billiards at international sporting events
Billiards has been an Olympic recognized sport since February 5, 1998 , but is not part of the Olympic program. The world umbrella organization for billiards, WCBS , is represented by the ARISF ( Association of IOC Recognized International Sports Federations ) vis-à-vis the IOC in its efforts to get into the Olympic program .
Billiards has been part of the sports program at the World Games since the 2001 edition in Akita and part of the Southeast Asian Games since 1991 . In addition, billiards was part of the Asian Games from 1998 to 2010 .
Billiards and doping
As a prerequisite for recognition as an Olympic sport and as a member of the DOSB , billiards is subject to all national anti-doping regulations of NADA and WADA .
Doping samples are therefore taken at national and international championships - training controls are also carried out.
The first official doping case in German billiards caused a sensation in 2007 and concerned Axel Büscher , the German champion in binding who tested positive for a forbidden concealment substance contained in a medically prescribed but unspecified drug during the German championships in Bad Wildungen. Among other things, the title was withdrawn and a ban.
At the 2009 German championship in Bad Wildungen, another athlete was convicted of taking banned substances and banned for two years.
literature
- L'Hombre , 1783, pp. 171-189, accessed July 13, 2012
- Wolfgang Göbels: Mathematical laws in billiards. German Association for the Promotion of Mathematics and Science Education , 66/7 (October 15, 2013) pp. 399–400, ISSN 0025-5866, © Verlag Klaus Seeberger, Neuss.
- Gaspard Gustave de Coriolis : Théorie mathématique du jeu billard. 1835.
- Maurice Vignaux : Le Billard. Libriare-Editeur, Paris, Delarue 1889 and 1895.
- William Hendricks' history of billiards: a compleat historie of Billiard evolution. Roxana, Illinois 1974.
- Rolf Kalb : Billiards made understandable. Copress, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-7679-0556-6 .
- Andreas Huber : really billiards. BLV, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-8354-0132-7 .
See also
- Billiard terminology , with lists of common technical terms.
Web links
Wikinews: Billiards - in the news- German Billiard Union
- Swiss Billiards Association
- Billiard Sports Association Austria
- Pool Association Austria
- World Confederation of Billiard Sports (WCBS)
- Association of Recognized IOC International Sports Federations (ARISF)
- Billiards - bang for the buck; After bowling and pinball in recent years, another US ball game is rolling over the Federal Republic: pool. (Der Spiegel, November 11, 1974)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b The origin of the game of Billiards ( Memento from May 29, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ O. Bloch, W. von Wartburg: French Etymological Dictionary (FEW) , Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1932, ISBN 2-13-044065-7
- ^ Translation of “bille” (French-German) from dict.leo.org
- ↑ suffixes -ard of Wiktionary
- ^ The poetical works of Edmund Spenser. P. 103, J. Nichol, Edinburgh, Scotland, 1859
- ↑ Act 2, Scene 5, Alexandria
- ↑ The Compleat Gamester in Wikimedia Commons
- ↑ An Epitome of Hoyle. Pp. 18-26
- ^ Forgotten History - The story of François Mingaud on snookergames.co.uk.
- ^ New York Times , April 14, 1859
- ^ EABA: The Professional Championship February 1870
- ^ New York Times , June 25, 1873
- ^ New York Times , April 21, 1878
- ^ Doping scandal at Billard Bild.de of March 18, 2008
- ↑ Positive doping case at DM 2009 Publication by the DBU on February 17, 2010
