Blackball

The English-originating version of eight-ball pool, also known as English pool, English eight-ball, blackball or simply reds and yellows, is a pool game played with sixteen balls (a and fifteen usually unnumbered ) on a small pool table with six . It originated in the United Kingdom and is played in the Commonwealth countries such as Australia and South Africa. In the UK and Ireland it is usually called simply "pool". The English version of eight-ball has two main sets of playing rules used in professional play; those of the World Pool-Billiard Association (WPA), known as "blackball rules", and the code of the World Eightball Pool Federation (WEPF), known as "international rules". History American-style eight-ball arose around 1900, derived from basic pyramid pool. In 1925, the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company began offering ball sets specifically for the game using unnumbered yellow and red balls (in contrast to the numbered and found in most pool ball sets), a black , and the white cue ball. These were introduced to make it easier for spectators to identify the two sets in early professional games held in casinos, and became known as "casino-style" sets. In the years following World War II, playing eight-ball on small coin-operated pool tables became a common pub game in American bars, a pastime which spread to Britain by the early 1960s. In the years following, the British game diverged from the American in equipment (including the use of casino-style balls, which had died out in the US) and rules. Equipment