The Story of the Game

It Started on the Grass, Kid

Every game's got a backstory. This one starts outdoors.

Back in the 1400s, folks in Northern Europe, most likely France, played a lawn game a lot like croquet. Balls on the grass. A stick to push 'em around. Nothing fancy.

Then the weather turned, the way it does. Somebody got smart and brought the whole thing inside. Put it up on a wooden table. Laid green cloth across the top so it'd feel like the lawn they'd left behind. Ran a low border around the edge so the balls stayed home.

That's it. That's the birth of billiards. No neon, no pool leagues, no money games, no hustle. Just people who didn't want a little rain to cost them their action.

Look down at the felt next time you're over a shot. That green ain't a decorating choice. It's six hundred years of grass, still hanging around the joint.

Kings, Queens, and a Little Royal Action

Before it was a barroom game, it was a palace game. Billiards got its start with a very expensive crowd.

King Louis XI of France is said to have owned one of the first known indoor tables, back in the 1400s. Louis XIV, the Sun King himself, took the game seriously enough that his doctors reportedly recommended it for his health. A 1694 print shows him at the table with his family, stick in hand, shooting like a man who knows nobody's gonna call a foul on him.

Mary, Queen of Scots, loved it too. Held prisoner before her execution in 1587, she complained when her captors took her billiard table away. Now that's a player.

In the early 1600s the game was famous enough that Shakespeare dropped it into Antony and Cleopatra. Cleopatra says "let's to billiards," which is a neat trick, since the game didn't exist for another fourteen hundred years or so. The Bard never let the facts get in the way of a good leave.

From Mace to Cue: The Tail That Wagged the Game

Early players didn't shoot with a cue. They shoved the ball with a mace, a light wooden club with a flat foot on the end, kind of like a golf putter. You didn't stroke the ball. You pushed it.

Trouble was, the mace was useless when the ball sat frozen against the rail. There was no room for that big head. So players flipped it around and used the skinny handle end instead. The French called that end the queue, the tail. That's where we get "cue."

By the 1670s, players were using the tail for more than rail shots. It was more accurate. It had touch. By about 1800, players had a separate straight cue, and over the next few decades it took over. Folks who stuck with the mace got left behind, and the game got a whole lot more interesting.

Every great stroke you've ever seen, from the pros on TV to the league player down the street, started with somebody deciding to turn the stick around.

Leather, Chalk, and a Little English

Hard wood on slick ivory. That's what they were working with. Miscues every other shot. Spin? Forget about it.

Then came Captain François Mingaud, a French army officer locked up in Paris's Bicêtre prison. He had a billiard table in there and plenty of time on his hands. Other folks had tried leather tips, but Mingaud perfected the idea and the stroke to go with it. When he got out in 1807, he went café to café and made the cue ball do things nobody had seen. Draw. Follow. Curve. Some say the crowds thought the ball was bewitched. He even worked out the massé by raising the cue straight up.

Add chalk for grip, and suddenly the cue ball listens to you. The English took to side spin, and over here in America it got a name that stuck: putting "English" on the ball.

Modern cue chalk came along in 1897, courtesy of a pro named William Spinks and a chemist named William Hoskins. That's a lot of history in the little blue cube sitting on every league table.

Slate, Rubber, and a Swiss Kid in Cincinnati

You can have the sweetest stroke in the world. Play on a warped table and you're just guessing.

The old tables had wooden beds under the cloth. Wood swells, wood shrinks, wood rolls off. So in the 1800s the good tables went to slate: heavy, cool, and dead flat. Today a tournament table sits on slate at least an inch thick, usually in three pieces so it stays true.

The rails got an upgrade too. Early cushions were stuffed with whatever bounced, mostly to keep balls on the table. Once vulcanized rubber came along, the cushions came alive. Banks got honest. Kicks got possible. That's why a bank on league night today plays the way the diamonds say it should. A whole new way to play opened up.

Then there's John Moses Brunswick, who came over from Switzerland at 15. On September 15, 1845, he opened a shop in Cincinnati, figuring he'd build carriages. He got hooked on billiards instead, since the best tables back then were coming over from England. He built his own and they sold. By 1884 his shop had merged its way into the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company, and Brunswick tables ended up in pool halls all over the country.

Why They Call It "Pool"

Here's a question that'll win you a drink: why is it called pool?

It isn't about water. "Pool" means a pot of money that everybody chips into. The word probably comes from the French poule, a pooled stake. The oldest known use of "pool" for a billiards-type game turns up in a Virginia newspaper back in 1797.

Early pool games were built around that pot. Several players threw in, and the winner took the stake. Then pocket games like pyramid pool came over from England, fifteen-ball pool caught on in America, and the name stuck to everything with six holes in it.

Then there's the poolroom. In the late 1800s, a "poolroom" was often a betting parlor, where folks pooled their bets on horse races. Billiard tables gave the customers something to do between races, and somewhere along the way, the rooms and the game got tangled up in folks' minds. Historians still argue over how much of today's name came from those rooms, so take that one as poolroom lore.

Either way, the game was born with everybody chipping in. These days it's league dues and team play instead of a pot on the rail. Some things never change.

The Straight Pool Kings

Before nine-ball, before bar boxes, the big game was straight pool. That's 14.1 continuous. Call your ball, call your pocket, and keep shooting. Leave one ball on the table, rack the other fourteen, and break 'em open with that last one. Run, rack, repeat. It's a game for grinders.

Ralph Greenleaf was the first big star. Between 1919 and 1938 he won the world straight pool title nineteen times. When he died in 1950, The New York Times put him alongside Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey for what he did for his game.

Then came Willie Mosconi of Philadelphia. His dad ran a pool hall and didn't want the kid playing, so he hid the balls. Willie practiced anyway, the story goes, with an old broomstick and small potatoes from his mother's kitchen. Between 1941 and 1957, Mosconi won the world title at least fifteen times. Some folks count nineteen.

And in March 1954, at an exhibition in Springfield, Ohio, he ran 526 balls in a row without a miss. That record stood for 65 years, until John Schmidt ran 626 in 2019. Jayson Shaw topped him in 2022, then ran 832 in 2025, the official record today. But Mosconi did his in an exhibition game, against a real opponent, and 526 is still the number everybody talks about.

Back then, a run of fifty would make a crowd buzz. On league night, you know how good it feels to run out a rack. Imagine doing it thirty-five times in a row.

Hollywood Racks 'Em Up

After World War II, pool went quiet. The halls got dusty. Then Hollywood walked in and bought a rack.

In 1961, The Hustler hit the screens. Paul Newman played "Fast Eddie" Felson, a young hustler with talent to burn and a lot to learn about character. It was black-and-white, smoky, and serious, and it got people back into pool halls. A whole generation picked up a cue because of that film.

Twenty-five years later, Martin Scorsese made the sequel. The Color of Money came out in 1986, with Newman back as an older, wiser Eddie and Tom Cruise as a hotshot kid. The big game this time was nine-ball. Newman won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the role, and the movie brought pool another wave of fans.

Here's the thing about a movie boom: it gets people in the door. What keeps them coming back is the game. Plenty of folks who walked in after one of those films are still playing today, a lot of them on league night.

Eight, Nine, and the Bar Box

Straight pool made the legends. Eight-ball and nine-ball turned the game into everybody's game.

Eight-ball showed up in America around 1900, grown out of pyramid pool. Somebody decided the 8 had to go down last, and each player only got half the other balls. By 1925 it was popular enough that Brunswick started selling sets made just for it. Today it's the most-played pool game in the world. Ask most folks what "pool" is, and they'll describe eight-ball.

Nine-ball took hold around 1920. Hit the lowest ball first, and whoever drops the 9 wins. It's fast, it's flashy, and one lucky break can steal a rack. It became the big professional game, and it's still the money game.

Then the tables came to the corner bar. Valley started in Bay City, Michigan, in 1947 and became the king of the coin-op table. Seven-footers, quarters in the slot, winner keeps the table. Suddenly you didn't need a membership or a smoky hall. You needed a couple of quarters and some nerve.

That little bar box is where most league players threw their first break. Plenty of leagues still play on one today.

The Ladies Who Ran the Table

Anybody who says pool is a man's game hasn't been paying attention.

Ruth McGinnis came out of Honesdale, Pennsylvania, and she was the real thing. In 1933 she took on Babe Didrikson, fresh off the Olympics, and beat her 400 to 62. She toured the country with Willie Mosconi giving exhibitions.

Jean Balukas was a prodigy out of Brooklyn. At nine years old, she finished fifth in the 1969 U.S. Open Straight Pool Championship. She went on to win five world straight pool titles, a world nine-ball title, and a pile of U.S. Opens.

Allison Fisher was a women's world snooker champion in England, then moved to America in 1995 and took over the women's pool tour. She was ranked number one for years, earned the nickname "the Duchess of Doom," and many call her the greatest female pool player ever.

Jeanette Lee, "the Black Widow," came out of Brooklyn too. She dressed all in black and played like she was hungry. She became one of the most recognizable faces the game has ever had.

All four of these players are in the Billiard Congress of America Hall of Fame. Look around on league night: the women on your teams are carrying a long tradition. Speaking of tradition, True Roll's Ladies Line is designed by Amber, an amateur championship player who took 3rd at nationals. Take a look at the Ladies Line.

The Modern Game: Bright Lights, Big Stage

The smoky back room grew up. Today's top players compete under TV lights in front of packed arenas.

Start with the Mosconi Cup. It began in 1994 and is named for Willie himself. Every year, Team Europe and Team USA go head to head in nine-ball, a little like golf's Ryder Cup but with chalk. In December 2025, Europe won 11–3 and took an 18–13 series lead, with one tie.

Matchroom, the outfit that runs the Cup, also promotes the World Pool Championship. In 2023 it launched the World Nineball Tour to tie the big pro events together. You can stream the matches from your couch, anywhere in the world.

Then there's Efren Reyes from the Philippines, "the Magician." He won the world nine-ball title in 1999 and the world eight-ball title in 2004, the first player to win world titles in two different pool disciplines. Watch his kicks once and you'll never call a shot impossible again.

The gear changed too. Carbon fiber shafts won't warp or nick. Ten-ball has become a big pro game too, since a called-shot game cuts down on luck.

The stage keeps getting bigger, but it all starts on a league night somewhere. Every pro you see on a stream once played somebody local for bragging rights.

League Night: Where the Story Lives Now

Kings had it. Hustlers had it. Hollywood had it. Now it's yours.

These days, the heart of pool isn't a palace or a movie set. It's a Tuesday night, a scoresheet, and a team that shows up.

The American Poolplayers Association grew out of the National Pool League, which started in 1979, and became the APA in 1981. Today it's the biggest pool league in the world, with more than 250,000 players. The BCA Pool League and other leagues carry the same torch in halls and bars across the country.

The APA's handicap system, the Equalizer, means anybody can play. A newcomer and a seasoned shooter can square off and both have a real shot. You don't have to be a champion. You just have to show up.

And that's the whole secret. Show up. Shake hands before the match. Call your own fouls. Root for your teammate's shot like it's yours. Win with a nod, lose with a handshake, and come back next week a little better.

True Roll Billiards is a Texas brand made by league players, for league players. We've sat on those stools, kept score on those sheets, and chased that last ball like everybody else. We're proud to be part of the story.

So chalk up and keep showing up.

Play True. Respect the Game.