Is it pool? Is it billiards? What is it I'm playing on this green felt table that reminds me of a smooth, clipped lawn placed conveniently at waist level?

The resemblance is not accidental. It is almost certain that the game we know mostly in the U.S. and Canada as "pool" almost certainly derived from a game played outdoors. Games have been played with sticks and balls of every size and type imaginable since before records were kept. Shakespeare mentioned the game of billiards in Antony and Cleopatra. But something that we today would recognize as a pool game probably first evolved in the early 19th century in France and moved quickly to England and other countries. The French origin is deduced mainly because of the word "billiard" itself. The French word "billart" refers to a type of stick or club, which resembled today's golf club and is thought to have led, also, to the modern pool cue.

In the United States the terms "pool"and "billiards" or "pocket billiards" mean essentially the same thing depending on the area of the country. In Britain and the Netherlands the word "billiard" refers games with specific rules. The game in Britain is usually called "English Billiards" and in the Netherlands Carambole Billiards - in shorthand "billiards"but not used as it is in the U.S. to refer in general to any game where balls are hit into pockets on a table using a cue stick. The game came to the United States early in the history of the country, but really came into its own as a serious sport when a man named Michael Phelan came from Ireland in the 1850's and began writing about it, designing tables and organizing tournaments.

As a generalization, the word "pool"is thought of as the common man's term for billiards and this time we look to another sport on which people often wager their hard-earned money, horse racing! In the first incarnation of off-track betting men would gather in rooms to put their money together (or "pool" it) to figure out what the odds would be. Naturally, these places came to be known as "poolrooms." To help entertain the men while they were waiting for races to begin these rooms usually had billiard tables. So interestingly, the name of the room came before the name of the game!

Today the game has a varied reputation. Some people think of it (and here we would be calling it "pool" not "billiards") as a useless pastime for people who should put their time to better use, not to mention the money lost on betting on the game. Just think of Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man preaching in song against "Trouble with a capital T, and that rhymes with P, and that stands for POOL!" He was hired by a whole town to save their youngsters from the seduction of this tawdry occupation. On the other hand, international pool tournaments are now followed avidly by people in all walks of life and prizes run into hundreds of thousands of dollars. Hardly a waste of time for those who aspire to the heights of this lowly game!