billiards, one shot per page
Twenty-four lessons on what the table is: the slate bed and its baize cloth, the cushions and the six pockets, the eighteen diamonds on the rails, the balls from ivory to phenolic resin, the cue with its leather tip, chalk that is not chalk, the stance, the bridge hand and the straight stroke, the aiming line and the ghost ball, follow, draw and english on the cue ball, position play for the shot after this one, the honest safety, the break that scatters the rack, eight-ball with its solids and stripes, nine-ball in ascending order, fouls and ball in hand, the big snooker table and the D, the colors from red to black, the frame and its breaks, the snooker that traps, the drills, the one honest hour, the cousins of pool, and teaching a friend the straight shot in one sitting.
One shot, one honest page. That's a lesson.
billiards, one shot per page
Twenty-four lessons on what the table is: the slate bed and its baize cloth, the cushions and the six pockets, the eighteen diamonds on the rails, the balls from ivory to phenolic resin, the cue with its leather tip, chalk that is not chalk, the stance, the bridge hand and the straight stroke, the aiming line and the ghost ball, follow, draw and english on the cue ball, position play for the shot after this one, the honest safety, the break that scatters the rack, eight-ball with its solids and stripes, nine-ball in ascending order, fouls and ball in hand, the big snooker table and the D, the colors from red to black, the frame and its breaks, the snooker that traps, the drills, the one honest hour, the cousins of pool, and teaching a friend the straight shot in one sitting.
Set in Space Grotesk, Inter and JetBrains Mono (SIL Open Font License).
Every fact in this book is as the primary source states it, fetched and read during this build: the Wikipedia articles Cue sports, Snooker, Glossary of cue sports terms, Billiard table, Cue stick, Billiard ball, Eight-ball, Nine-ball and Pool (cue sports), all cached at build time and cited in each lesson's source line. Honest misses: the cached World Pool-Billiard Association and Magic tricks articles are redirect stubs, pointing at World Pool Association and Magic (illusion) respectively, which were not fetched; nothing in this book comes from either.
The cached Break article is a disambiguation page; its single cue-sports line is the only thing drawn from it, and all break rules here come from the Eight-ball, Nine-ball and Glossary articles instead. No cached article gives a practice schedule or drill set, so the practice rituals (the drills, the one honest hour, the one-sitting teaching order, the lesson order, the practice asks, the drawing convention) are this book's plan. General information, not advice. An honest no-demo book: no shot was filmed and no photograph was staged by this machine. No product recommendations. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Wikipedia. No facts from Reddit, forums, vendor blogs or search engines.
Your purchase is for personal use only. You do not have redistribution rights: please do not share, resell, or republish this book or its pages.
© 2026 Steve Hodgkiss. All rights reserved. Personal use only; no redistribution rights.
Edition 1.0 · stevehodgkiss.net
Contents
Per the Wikipedia article Cue sports, cue sports are a wide variety of games of skill played with a cue stick, which is used to strike billiard balls and thereby cause them to move around a table covered in cloth (usually baize), bounded by elastic bumpers known as cushions; there are three major subdivisions: carom billiards on tables without pockets typically ten feet in length, pool on six-pocket tables of seven, eight or nine-foot length, and snooker, English billiards and Russian pyramid on a large six-pocket table with dimensions just under 12 ft by 6 ft; the word cue came from queue, the French word for tail, from the early practice of striking with the tail of the mace.
What a cue sport is
Cue sports are games of skill played with a cue stick, striking the balls around a table covered in cloth, bounded by elastic cushions.
Three great families: carom on pocketless ten-foot tables, pool on six-pocket tables of seven to nine feet, and snooker on the big table, just under 12 ft by 6 ft.
The word cue came from queue, French for tail. The whole sport lives in that one stick.
Name the three families out loud this week at any table you pass: carom, pool, snooker. Then say which one you are holding.
Per the Wikipedia article Glossary of cue sports terms, the stroke is the motion of the cue stick and the player's arm on a shot; follow-through is the extension of the cue stick through the cue ball position during the end of a player's stroke in the direction originally aimed; steering is the lamentable practice of not following through with the cue straight, but veering off in the direction of the shot's travel or the side english is applied, away from the proper aiming line, and is a common source of missed shots; per the article's miscue entry, common causes of a miscue include a lack of chalk, a poorly groomed cue tip, and not stroking straight through the cue ball.
The straight stroke
The stroke is the motion of the cue and your arm; follow-through is the cue extending through where the ball was, in the aimed direction.
The named sin is steering: veering off the aiming line as the ball travels, a common source of missed shots. It also feeds the miscue.
Swing straight through and stop. The ball leaves; the cue keeps its honesty a moment longer.
Stroke twenty straight-in shots this week watching only your cue tip, never the ball, and count the straight finishes.
Per the Wikipedia article Glossary of cue sports terms, position is the placement of the balls, especially the cue ball, relative to the next planned shot, also known as shape; position play is skilled playing in which knowledge of ball speed, angles, post-impact trajectory and other factors is used to gain position, that is a good leave, after the object ball is struck, and the goals of position play are generally to ensure that the next shot is easy or at least makeable, and to play a safety in the event of a miss, intentional or otherwise.
Position play
Position is where the balls sit, especially the cue ball, relative to the next shot. Players call good position shape.
Position play is the sourced definition itself: ball speed, angles, post-impact trajectory used to make the next shot easy, or at least makeable.
Pot the ball, yes. But the cue ball's landing is the shot you are really playing.
Before every shot this week, say out loud where the cue ball must stop. Say it before the stroke, never after.
Per the Wikipedia article Eight-ball, the game is played with sixteen balls, a cue ball and fifteen object balls: seven solid-colored balls numbered 1 through 7, seven striped balls numbered 9 through 15, and the black 8; after the break the table is open until one player legally pockets a called ball other than the 8, which assigns that player the group of the pocketed ball; the object of the game is to legally pocket the 8 in a called pocket, which can only be done after all of the player's group has been cleared from the table; the game arose around 1900 in the United States as a development of pyramid pool; per the Wikipedia article Cue sports, eight-ball is the world's most widely played cue sport.
Eight-ball
Sixteen balls: solids 1 through 7, stripes 9 through 15, the black 8 belonging to neither.
The table is open until a legal pot hands you your group; then you clear it all and call the 8's pocket to win.
Born around 1900 from pyramid pool, now the world's most widely played cue sport.
Rack one honest triangle this week, 8 in the middle and a stripe behind a solid, then break your own rack.
Per the Wikipedia article Billiard table, the playing area of a tournament snooker table measures 11 feet 8.5 inches by 5 ft 10 in, with a tolerance of half an inch, though commonly referred to as 12 ft by 6 ft; the height from the floor to the top of the cushion is between 2 ft 9.5 in and 2 ft 10.5 in; the baulk area is marked by a baulk line drawn across the width at 29 in from the bottom cushion, and a semicircle with a radius of 11.5 in centered on this line forms the D, in which the cue ball must be placed when breaking or after being potted or shot off the table; snooker tables have rounded pocket entries, and the cloth's nap traditionally runs from the baulk to the top end, brushed and ironed in this direction.
The snooker table
The tournament bed: 11 ft 8.5 in by 5 ft 10 in, called 12 by 6, its cushion tops under three feet high.
At the near end, the baulk line at 29 in across the width, and the D, a semicircle of 11.5 in radius where the break-off begins and the potted cue ball returns.
The nap runs baulk to top end, brushed that way: the table has a grain, like wood.
Find the D on any snooker table this week, stand inside it, and look the full length to the black's spot.
This book's plan for teaching a friend in one sitting, resting on sourced mechanics: per the Wikipedia article Glossary of cue sports terms, the bridge hand is usually the non-dominant hand, chalk increases the tip's friction and is essential to shots with spin, stance is the shooter's posture during a shot, and the aiming line runs from the pocket's center through the object ball's center; per the Wikipedia article Cue stick, the idea of the cue initially was to strike the cue ball as centrally as possible to avoid a miscue; the one-sitting teaching order on this page is this book's plan.
Teaching a friend
This book's plan, one sitting, four sentences: bridge with the non-dominant hand, chalk the tip, stance low, strike the ball as centrally as possible.
Then one sourced idea: the aiming line from pocket center through the object ball. Walk it, then shoot straight through.
Teach one friend the straight shot only. Everything else in this book can wait a week.
Take one friend from curious to first honest pot this week, in a single sitting, saying the four sentences out loud.