Cue sports
Major games

There are two main varieties of billiard games: carom and pocket.

The main carom billiards games are straight rail, balkline and three cushion billiards. All are played on a pocketless table with three balls; two cue balls and one object ball. In all, players shoot a cue ball so that it makes contact with the opponent's cue ball as well as the object ball. Others of multinational interest are four-ball and five-pins.

The most globally popular of the large variety of pocket games are pool and snooker. A third, English billiards, has some features of carom billiards. English billiards used to be one of the two most-competitive cue sports along with the carom game balkline, at the turn of the 20th century and is still enjoyed today in Commonwealth countries. Another pocket game, Russian pyramid and its variants like kaisa are popular in the former Eastern bloc.
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