# Can anyone give a brief explanation of how to play English billiards? **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [January 16, 2020, 9:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anyone-give-a-brief-explanation-of-how-to-play-english-billiards/846500 "2020-01-16T09:40:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Dead\_Cat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc29f/32.png) [@Dead\_Cat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dead_Cat)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2020, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anyone-give-a-brief-explanation-of-how-to-play-english-billiards/846500/21 "2020-01-17T12:55:54Z")
> [@Charlie\_Wayne](#): > > That youtube video certainly explains quite a lot about the game. But I still have a couple of questions. > > 1. Is it possible to make more than one point on a shot? That is if the 3 balls strike each other multiple times, do you get multiple points for that? > > 2. Why is it so important to try to get all 3 balls into a corner of the table? Is it because if a player makes any points during a shot, do they get another shot? Or does each player only get to take one shot in turn? 1. You don’t get extra points for hitting the other balls multiple times in the same shot, but you can score points for multiple events in the same shot. For example, if you achieve a cannon and a hazard (pot) in the same shot, both will score. The theoretical maximum score on a single shot is therefore 10, as explained in the “Scoring” section here: [English billiards - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_billiards) In practice it’s pretty rare for this to happen, not least because the player is usually trying to set things up to make it easy for their next shot. For example, see [here in this video](https://youtu.be/aSQs3Kjw5ts?t=42) - they could easily have potted by hitting the shot a bit harder, thus scoring for the cannon and the hazard in the same shot, but that would have left them out of position for the next shot, making it hard for them to continue to score. 1. The former - if you make a scoring shot, you get another go. A sequence of scoring shots is called a “break”. Expert players can routinely construct breaks amounting to hundreds of points. So as I mentioned above, it’s not just about what you can score on the current shot, it’s getting into position for the next shot. [Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwgDF1nJ7dA) is another video that shows how a game begins. The first player to play doesn’t have much prospect of scoring heavily with only 2 balls on the table, so plays a shot designed to make it hard for the other player to score, by leaving both the balls away from the pockets and from each other. The second player makes a very good long pot for 2 points, but as it was the opponent’s ball that was potted and not the red ball, it is not replaced on the table yet, so he has to settle for gently hitting the remaining ball (missing it would be a foul and give 2 points to the opponent). This leaves both balls in ‘baulk’ (the bottom quarter of the table), which means the first player has to hit a cushion not in baulk before hitting a ball. This he does, but fails to score (I think he narrowly missed the cannon), leaving the table to the second player again. And so on. Basically, the start of the game is a battle for the first player to get control of the balls around the top end (nearest the camera) of the table, as from there is where the best opportunities for big scoring breaks tend to come from. In particular, if you can manouevre both other balls near to a cushion and each other, it is fairly easy to keep repeating little cannons time after time. For this reason, there are arbitrary limits in place for how many such shots you can play in a row in competitions, otherwise a player could literally continue for days at a time! ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2020, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anyone-give-a-brief-explanation-of-how-to-play-english-billiards/846500/22 "2020-01-17T13:52:00Z")
> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > I can’t believe it was 23 years ago! Ronnie was insanely good at his peak, he never remotely looked like missing any of those balls, they seemed to rifle straight in and I think he ran \*slightly \*out of position twice and hardly stopped to ponder. Yeah, that’s about the time when I would occasionally catch a game. I first\* was introduced to it in 1996 while spending a few months working in the UK, so that was my introduction to O’Sullivan, but a few years later when I moved to the continent, the English sports channel would carry snooker, and I’d find it oddly mesmerizing and relaxing to watch, so I did catch him on his way up (though not quite his peak), as well as familiarizing myself with players like Steve Davis, John Higgins, Stephen Hendry, Mark Williams, etc. What they do is borderline magic to me. \*Well, technically, I already knew of the rules and the flow of the game before seeing an actual match on TV, as it was part of three billiards games you can select in Accolade’s _Rack 'Em_ (1988), which I played many times on the C64. ---
**Author:** ![Charlie\_Wayne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4bbf92/32.png) [@Charlie\_Wayne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charlie_Wayne)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2020, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anyone-give-a-brief-explanation-of-how-to-play-english-billiards/846500/23 "2020-01-17T15:38:24Z")
> [@Dead\_Cat](#): > > 1. You don’t get extra points for hitting the other balls multiple times in the same shot, but you can score points for multiple events in the same shot. For example, if you achieve a cannon and a hazard (pot) in the same shot, both will score. The theoretical maximum score on a single shot is therefore 10, as explained in the “Scoring” section here: [English billiards - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_billiards) > > In practice it’s pretty rare for this to happen, not least because the player is usually trying to set things up to make it easy for their next shot. For example, see [here in this video](https://youtu.be/aSQs3Kjw5ts?t=42) - they could easily have potted by hitting the shot a bit harder, thus scoring for the cannon and the hazard in the same shot, but that would have left them out of position for the next shot, making it hard for them to continue to score. > > 1. The former - if you make a scoring shot, you get another go. A sequence of scoring shots is called a “break”. Expert players can routinely construct breaks amounting to hundreds of points. So as I mentioned above, it’s not just about what you can score on the current shot, it’s getting into position for the next shot. > > [Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwgDF1nJ7dA) is another video that shows how a game begins. The first player to play doesn’t have much prospect of scoring heavily with only 2 balls on the table, so plays a shot designed to make it hard for the other player to score, by leaving both the balls away from the pockets and from each other. The second player makes a very good long pot for 2 points, but as it was the opponent’s ball that was potted and not the red ball, it is not replaced on the table yet, so he has to settle for gently hitting the remaining ball (missing it would be a foul and give 2 points to the opponent). This leaves both balls in ‘baulk’ (the bottom quarter of the table), which means the first player has to hit a cushion not in baulk before hitting a ball. This he does, but fails to score (I think he narrowly missed the cannon), leaving the table to the second player again. And so on. > > Basically, the start of the game is a battle for the first player to get control of the balls around the top end (nearest the camera) of the table, as from there is where the best opportunities for big scoring breaks tend to come from. In particular, if you can manouevre both other balls near to a cushion and each other, it is fairly easy to keep repeating little cannons time after time. For this reason, there are arbitrary limits in place for how many such shots you can play in a row in competitions, otherwise a player could literally continue for days at a time! Thank you. Very much appreciated. ---
**Author:** ![Dahu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dahu/32/3416_2.png) [@Dahu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dahu)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2020, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anyone-give-a-brief-explanation-of-how-to-play-english-billiards/846500/24 "2020-01-17T20:40:31Z")
> [@kevlaw](#): > > Bar billiards is something else entirely. I used to play it a lot as a kid because they had it in the pub that my dad used to take me to 🙂 > > It’s a fun little game. The table is on a slope so that the balls come back down if they don’t go down a hole. No it’s the other way around. The playing surface is flat. If a ball is potted it falls on a slope so comes back down. It’s a great game and used to be reasonably common in the pubs but sadly it’s rare to see these days. There are pockets of enthusiasts though still e.g. in York [York Bar Billiards](http://yorkbarbilliards.altervista.org/home/) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anyone-give-a-brief-explanation-of-how-to-play-english-billiards/846500.md?page=1)