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• Russian billiard – with narrow pockets, protruding from cushions, convenient to cue with any power.

• Polish billiard – with big pockets in comparison with ball size; cushions are a bit lowered and balls are pocketed easily. This billiard is small and it does not allow powerful hits.

• Vienna billiard or French billiard with pockets; cushions are extremely resilient;

• French or Italian cannon billiard with no pockets; not big in size; cushion is not very resilient

Cushions and board are usually covered with dark green cloth (rarely with red and blue), which shouldn’t be villous in order not to prevent correct moving of balls. Cushions can be from 2.5 to 5 inches high; the purpose of cushions is to parry balls correctly. Cushions in Russian billiard are narrower than in French billiard. Cushions are made from the most dry and hard wood, mostly from oak, red wood, and nut wood. The board of billiard should be hard and plane; it was made from pieces of wood, glued together, like on parquet floors. Nowadays, wood is not used for boards, instead of that, people use schist because it is lighter, much resilient, harder and cheaper material; billiard boards consist of three parts. There are six pockets with hanged up net baskets on billiard; 4 pockets situated in corners and 2 of them are in the middle of long sides. Billiards without pockets are called French and serve to play cannon, that is very popular in France. Cannon became widely spread in 1827, when Mingaut, the author of “Le noble jen billard”, had published his method of improving cue. A good billiard should have absolute horizontality and slickness of board, so balls in their movement subordinate hits only, but not secondary causes, such as roughness or slope of board. Horizontality is detected by carpenter’s level; there are special screws on each of six billiard legs that move by the use of nuts and serve to set ultimate horizontality of billiard board. Billiard game is based on the rules of resilient member hits; these rules are described in mechanics. The most popular billiards games nowadays are Three-ball, Eight-ball, Nine-ball, Straight pool, Pyramid, American, 14+1, Rotation, and Snooker games.

History of billiard. Billiard was found in China; the first report about billiard in Europe referred to 16^th century. Carl IX played billiard in famous the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, when he heard bell fetches, called for Catholics. Shakespeare (1616) already knew about billiard, since he made Cleopatra (Antony and Cleopatra, act II, scene 5) play billiard with her eunuch. Mary Stuart in the day of her tragic death (17-02-1587) asked in her letter to Glasgow archbishop to take care about her billiard. It is difficult to say definitely, where billiard appeared earlier, in France or in England. John Wilk asserted that billiard appeared in England earlier and was called balyard (from Old Saxon). Shturz in his book “Games and funs of English nation” saw the beginning of billiard in the game, named Palle Malspiel, a kind of croquet. In the 17^th century, billiard became popular in England and George II prohibited playing billiard in public places on penalty of 10 pounds. In 1674, Etienne Liason published his book “Rules of billiard” in France, Lyons. Billiard was very popular at court of Louis XVI. Crafty Michel de Chamillard, was a small bureaucrat, in consequence Minister of War (1707), was a partner of the king to play billiard. Despite of being one of the most skillful billiard players, he managed to lose billiard matches while playing with the king.