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Does thinking about indoor games evoke memories of endless sessions of pool and snooker with your friends? If you are an avid fan of billiards or snooker, you must know about the different types of balls used for the different games. A game of carom is never played with the ball used for American style pool game.

Lets take, for example, the ball sets used for snooker games. The standard snooker balls measure 52.5 mm in diameter, however some balls also measure 52.4 mm. They have no standard weights, however, they usually weigh around 3 g. On the other hand, for a game of three-cushion, straight or balkline, you need balls that are 61.5 mm in diameter.

If you specialize in the game of Russian pyramid, you need to use a different set of billiards balls (with 68 or 72 mm diameter) from those used in Bumper pool (balls with 52.5 mm diameter). The blackball (British-style pool) uses 4.76 cm cue balls and 5.08 cm object balls, while the American-style pool uses balls with 5.715 cm in diameter.

Do you know how the balls where initially manufactured? They were fashioned out of ivory from elephant tusks. However, today phenolic resin is the most common material used for manufacturing these balls.

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Cue sport involves balls of different sizes, colors, coatings and patterns etc that determine friction coefficient, resilience and hardness. Earliest pool balls were made of clay, wood and later ivory but contemporary balls are manufactured by plastic materials that are not prone to chipping or cracking.

In carom billiards, balls are not numbered and 61.5 mm in diameter. Here four/three balls are played with two red object balls and one white/yellow cue ball for each player. American style pool balls are larger than British pool balls and are widely used worldwide. These are 2.25cm in diameter with 0.005cm tolerance, colored and numbered. Typically there are nine-ball or eight-ball games played by fifteen balls in pocket billiards. In a British style blackball game 5.08 cm object balls and 4.76 cm cue balls are used but without any numbering. Twenty two colored balls of same weight and of 52.5 mm diameter (tolerance 0.05mm) are played in snooker.

In Russian Pyramid and Finnish Kaisa games, all-white numbered object balls are played by yellow/red cue balls. These balls are 68 mm or 72 mm in diameter. Bumper pool requires eight object balls and two special balls of approximately 52.5mm diameter. Also there are some special training balls for beginners and novelty balls like Blacklight, Boble ball, Tag ball etc.

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Russian pyramid is popularly known as pyramid or Russian billiards or Russian Pool. Though name is quite same but the rules of the game differ from the conventional western game of billiards.

There are different variations of Russian pyramid played. However, the most common of them are Free Pyramid or American Pyramid, Combined Pyramid or Moscow Pyramid and Dynamic or Petersburg Pyramid. All three games are played with white balls which are racked on the table in the shape of pyramid. The opening player hits this pyramid with the cue ball.

Thumb rule for all three games is that all eight balls must be pocketed in order to win the game. But in case of American pyramid, the players can use any ball as the cue one. However, in Moscow and Petersburg pyramid only one ball can be used as cue. After scoring when the player pockets the ball, he or she must remove one white ball from the table. In Moscow Pyramid, the cue ball is placed in baulk and player needs to pocket the balls only in far corner and side. And in Petersburg pyramid, the cue ball can be placed at any part of pool table by the player, but cue ball may not be pocketed.

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