See the Four-ball billiards main article for the game. If you’re shopping for tables in a showroom, make sure you observe the lighting to see how it compares with your lighting scheme at home. This color scheme is also great for a more playful arcade-style feel, especially with silver highlights, bright lighting, and a coin-op style table. While these kinds of tables are great if that’s what you’re looking for, they are almost never made with slate and are designed for casual play with a lifetime of no more than a few years. When a player pockets the cue ball, there are two common outcomes as a result of the foul. Carom, or French, billiards is played with three balls on a table that has no pockets. Pockets: Snooker tables also have six pockets, but the pockets are narrower and more challenging to pocket balls into, requiring greater precision. As well as club-level games, county-level tournaments, and leagues, there are regular world championships and international matches between croquet-playing countries. American-style eight-ball rules are played around the world by professionals and in many amateur leagues.

These are used for amateur and professional play. 8, 9.5, and 16 mm film stocks, intended for amateur and other nontheatrical use, were never manufactured with a nitrate base in the west, but rumors exist of 16 mm nitrate film having been produced in the former Soviet Union and China. Despite its self-oxidizing hazards, nitrate is still regarded highly as the stock is more transparent than replacement stocks, what is billiards and older films used denser silver in the emulsion. The crucial advantage cellulose triacetate had over nitrate was that it was no more of a fire risk than paper (the stock is often referred to as "non-flam": this is true-but it is combustible, just not in as volatile or as dangerous a way as nitrate), while it almost matched the cost and durability of nitrate. Originally the game was called Billiards and is, of course, still referred to as such by the pros.

Implements carom billiards (eg. Carom games such as straight-rail, three-cushion, balkline, and five pins make use of only three balls: a red object ball, one solid white cue ball for player one, and another cue ball that is white with a dot on it, or yellow, for player two. Each time a ball is roqueted, the striker gets two bonus shots. Re-felting might be needed from time to time, but the slate itself is virtually indestructible under normal playing conditions. You may even enjoy multiple player games such as Golf for a decade or two. Durability of finish, complexities of "multiple stage" modern finishes, and other factors including environmental regulation led manufacturers to choose newer technologies. As such, you’ll find more and more billiard light fixtures that are designed for use with LED bulbs. Some of the most popular styles for bars, breweries and game rooms these days are industrial, farmhouse and rustic lighting fixtures. If you have a smaller table (i.e. 7 feet), you’ll be looking for a lighting fixture closer to 45 inches or smaller, and that uses 4 bulbs or fewer. Of course, the reason to install your lighting before your table is that if your table is already installed and you decide you want to have a new light fitted afterward, there’s a risk that your table could end up being damaged during the installation.

In light of the explosive results, this process was called the "Hyatt gun method". Pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN), a related explosive. An owner of a billiard saloon in Colorado wrote to Hyatt about the explosive tendencies, saying that he did not mind very much personally but for the fact that every man in his saloon immediately pulled a gun at the sound. In practice, though, this has not proved to be as much of a problem as was feared. Nitrate dominated the market for professional-use 35 mm motion picture film from the industry's origins to the early 1950s. While cellulose acetate-based safety film, notably cellulose diacetate and cellulose acetate propionate, was produced in the gauge for small-scale use in niche applications (such as printing advertisements and other short films to enable them to be sent through the mails without the need for fire safety precautions), the early generations of safety film base had two major disadvantages relative to nitrate: it was much more expensive to manufacture, and considerably less durable in repeated projection. You can check the weight of the table, feel the underside of it, and determine how much it typically sells for. If you don’t feel like getting down on all fours to check the table, you may be able to feel inside a pocket.