English billiards English billiards English billiards, called simply billiards in the United Kingdom, where it originated, and in many former British colonies such as Australia, is a cue sport that combines the aspects of carom billiards and pocket billiards. Two (originally both white, with one marked e.g. with a black dot, but more recently one white, one yellow) and a red are used. Each player or team uses a different cue ball. It is played on a billiards table with the same dimensions as a snooker table and points are scored for and pocketing the balls. English billiards has also, but less
Carom billiards at least 1807. The game is sometimes referred to as "one-cushion" or "one-cushion billiards", which is the direct translation of its name into English from various other languages such as Spanish (""una banda"") and German (""einband""). The object of the game is to score cushion caroms, meaning a carom off of both object balls with at least one rail being struck before the hit on the second object ball. Cushions caroms was defunct for a number of years, but was revived in the late 1860s as another alternative to straight rail, for the same reasons that balkline developed, i.e., as