American pool
American pool is a term used in the United Kingdom, and sometimes more broadly outside North America, to refer to pool cue sports that make use of formerly American-style and now professionally world-standardised numbered billiard balls that have a standard diameter of 57 mm, as opposed to British-style unnumbered 56 mm balls. Other "American" pool differences from British-style pool include larger pockets to accommodate the bigger balls, and markings on the
The term may apply to any pool game variety using such a ball set, and is commonly applied especially to the most internationally competitive of these sports:
- Eight-ball, the most commonly played form of pool
- Nine-ball, the leading professional variant of pool, with historical roots in the United States in the 1920s
- Ten-ball, a rotation game very similar to nine-ball, but more difficult, using ten balls instead of nine, and played
- Straight pool, formerly the common sport of championship competition until overtaken by faster-playing games like nine-ball
- One-pocket, an extremely challenging game in which each player must make all shots into a single pocket.
