CueVR

Getting started

Play any cue sport, any way you like: snooker, pool, billiards and 29 more games, in your room through mixed reality or in a packed arena in virtual reality, with true-to-life physics, computer players from beginner to world-class, and online play with friends or in a club full of players. Build your own cue down to the inlays and name plate, your own ball sets and your own tables, any size and pocket, and play with controllers, your bare hands or your real cue.

All you need is a Quest 3 or 3S. This section takes you from putting the headset on to your first frame, the way the game starts: in mixed reality, with your own room around the table, and two controllers as the cue. Everything else (a real cue, your bare hands, playing in a virtual room) is further on, once you have played a frame.

1. Put the table in your room

The first time you start CueVR, the table panel opens before anything else. You are looking at your own room, and the game wants to know where the table should stand.

• Stand where you want to play, ideally beside a real desk or table: resting your bridge hand on something solid makes it far easier.
• Hold the trigger and move your hand until the outline sits on your desk, then let go. The bright edge of the outline is the side you play from.
• Point at START PLAYING and pull the trigger.

The table stands about 85 cm high, like a real one, and you do not need a room as big as the table: you move the table, not yourself (step 4). Setting up the table has the rest, including the scoreboard.

2. Pick a game and press PLAY

Home opens in front of you on a sheet of glass. Point at things with either controller and pull the trigger. Three numbered steps set up the frame: 1 GAME (UK 8-ball to start with), 2 RULES and 3 VS, your opponent, a computer player to start with. Leave them as they are for your first frame, point at PLAY and pull the trigger.

3. Hold the cue and play a shot

The cue lies between your two controllers. Your right hand holds the butt and plays the stroke; your left hand is the bridge, where the front of the cue rests. The line between your hands is the line of the shot. (Left-handed? Settings → Controls → CUE HAND.)

1. Put the tip on the cue ball and line up the shot. Rest your left hand on your real desk if you can.
2. Choose where to hit the ball by where the tip is: higher for top, lower for screw, left or right for side.
3. Pull the trigger on your right hand. That locks the line, so your aim cannot drift while you deliver.
4. Keep it held and move your right hand forward through the ball. How fast you move it is how hard you hit: a slow push for a gentle shot, a real swing to break. Let go afterwards.

When the cue ball is in your hand after a foul, it sits in front of your right controller: carry it where you want it and pull the trigger to put it down. Playing a shot has the rest: shortening the cue, the rest, and more.

4. Move the table, not yourself

You do not need to walk round a twelve-foot table. The left stick slides the table around your room and the right stick turns it, at any time, even in the middle of a frame, so any shot can be brought in front of you. Walking round it works too.

5. The menus during a frame

Tap MENU for the pause menu: resume, replay the last shot, re-rack, move the table, concede the frame, or go Home. Hold MENU to bring Home to where you are standing, from anywhere; your frame waits for you.

Where to go next

PracticeA free table, shots taken back, a target to play to, and challenges The computer playersEight of them, from Rookie Rick to The Machine The gamesSnooker, pool, billiards, carom, pyramid and many more TablesEvery size and pocket, and L-shaped, round and many-sided beds Real cue attachmentClamp a controller to your own cue and play with it Bridge with your handPut a controller down and make your bridge with your own hand Play in another roomThe pub, the club, an arena, a library, and walk about in them Online and the clubPlay a friend, or go down the club and join a table Careers and trophiesClimb from the pub league to a world title Build a cueSplice, veneers, woods, inlays and a name plate Build a ball setColours, stripes, numbers, patterns and what they are made of Build a tableIts bed, pockets, jaws and cushions

Finding your way

There are two menus. Home is where you set up a game. The pause menu is what you get when you press MENU during a frame. Both open in front of you, wherever you are standing.

Home

A B C D E F G H I J

1. GAME — Which game: snooker, the pools, billiards, carom and the rest. Opens a page of cards, one per game.
2. RULES — Which version of that game, such as pub rules or the official ones.
3. VS — Who you play: a computer player, someone online, a career or event match, or practice on your own.
4. PLAY — Starts the frame. The picture above it is the table you will play on.
5. The table's look — The table, the cloth, the wood, the balls and your cue. Each opens a page of pictures to choose from.
6. Environment — Where the table stands, the scoreboard, the lights and the room around you.
7. Settings — How you hold and play the cue, moving around, comfort, graphics, sound and backups.
8. Records — Your stats, the games you have played, replays, your career and club tournaments.
9. Workshop — Build your own table, ball set, cue or challenge.
10. The buttons — Point and pull the trigger to choose. Tap MENU to close the menu. Hold MENU to bring it to where you are standing.

The pause menu

A B C D E F G H I J K

1. ROOM — Change the room around the table without leaving the frame: your own room in mixed reality, or one of the game's rooms.
2. MOVEMENT — What the thumbsticks do: Table moves the table, Camera moves you. Mixed reality and the game's rooms each remember theirs.
3. THIS GAME — The rules of the game you are playing, and the stats for this match. Practice adds its row here, with the drills and moving the balls.
4. Resume — Back to the frame. Tapping MENU does the same.
5. Replay — Watch the last shot again. See Instant replays.
6. Undo — Take back the last shot. In practice only.
7. Re-rack — Set the balls up again and start the frame over.
8. Table — Move the table or change its height.
9. Concede — Give up the frame.
10. Home — Go to Home. The match is kept, and you can carry on from there.
11. The buttons — Greyed-out squares do nothing in this frame. Hold MENU to go straight to Home.

Setting up the table

Before you play, tell the game where your real desk or table is, so the game's table sits on top of it.

CueVR's table works best on top of something real, such as a desk, a dining table or the end of a bed, so that when you rest your bridge hand on the cloth it lands on something solid. On the panel you mark that real surface with an outline. The game's table then stands on it, at the same height and facing the same way.

Putting the outline on your desk

1. Stand at the side of your desk you will play from.
2. Hold the trigger. The outline moves with your hand.
3. Move your hand so the outline sits on the desk and runs along it, then let go.
4. Point at START PLAYING, or press A. The game remembers it next time.

With two controllers there is a quicker way: put one hand on each front corner of your desk and hold both triggers. The outline lines up with the edge between your hands.

SHOW IT WHILE PLAYING, on the same panel, sets whether you see the outline during a frame: Never, Always, or On press. With On press, a short press of the upper button on your cue hand shows it for a couple of seconds.

The table starts at 85 cm high, the height of a real snooker table. Your room does not need to be as big as the table: you can move and turn the table with the sticks at any time, even during a frame, to bring the shot you want in front of you.

To change any of this later, press MENU and choose Table, or go to Environment → Table on the main menu.

Pinning the scoreboard

The scoreboard normally hangs above the far end of the table and moves with it. If you would rather it lived somewhere real — a wall, or a television that is switched off — tap Scoreboard, the second step on the table panel. Grip the board, carry it to where you want it and let go; it stays flat where you left it. Press A when you are done. It keeps that place between sessions, exactly as the table does, until BACK TO AUTO puts it back above the table.

The arena and the rooms have scoreboards built in. A pinned board is a place in your real room, and they are not your real room — so while you are in one the scoreboard goes where that room keeps it: the arena's screen in the far wall, the pub's television, the club's board at the head of the table, the dining room's gilt frame and the library's frame among the books. Your pinned position is not lost: it comes back the moment you go back to your own room or the dark hall.

Controls

There are four ways to hold the cue. Start with two controllers; you can switch at any time on Settings → Controls.

Two controllersHow the game starts. The cue lies between your hands. One controller and your bare handPut the bridge controller down and bridge with your hand. A real cueClamp a controller to your own cue and play with it.

A Logitech MX Ink pen works as a cue too: see The Logitech MX Ink.

Two controllers

The cue lies between your two controllers, and the line between them is the line of the shot. One hand is your bridge hand, where the front of the cue rests; the other holds the back of the cue and plays the stroke. With CUE HAND on RIGHT, your right hand is at the back.

Settings → Controls

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1. CUE HAND — The hand that holds the back of the cue. Left-handed? Set it to LEFT.
2. CUE — CONTROLLERS to play with your controllers, or REAL CUE once you have clamped a controller to a real cue and calibrated it (see Real cue attachment).
3. BRIDGE ON THE TABLE — On: your bridge stays where you put it on the cloth, like a real bridge hand, instead of following your controller in the air.
4. CUE RESTS ON THE TABLE — On: if your hands go too low, the cue lies on the rail or cloth instead of sinking into the table.
5. LOCK THE CUE WITH — What fixes your aim for the shot. BACK TRIGGER: pull the trigger in the hand at the back of the cue. BRIDGE TRIGGER: pull the trigger in your bridge hand once the tip is at the ball. AUTO (FEATHER): just feather at the ball and it locks by itself; stop feathering and you can aim again.
6. YOUR HANDS — Shows your own hands instead of controllers, where the headset can see them. Needs hand tracking on in the headset's settings.
7. BARE BRIDGE HAND — Put your bridge controller down and bridge with your own hand. See One controller and your bare hand.
8. PINCH TO MOVE — With a bare bridge hand, a pinch in the air moves the table. Turn it off if you only want a pinch to press buttons.
9. HANDS NEAR YOUR FACE — HIDDEN stops your hands and controllers blocking your view when you cue close to your face.
10. CALIBRATE A CUE — Sets up a real cue. See Real cue attachment.
11. RESET BRIDGE POS — Puts the cue back between your hands if it has ended up somewhere odd.

Settings → Cue feel

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1. STROKE — Real cue only: how much of your hand's shake is smoothed out of your aim. Your power is never changed.
2. CONTROLLER STROKE — Controllers only. LOCKED keeps the cue on the line you aimed once you pull the trigger. FREE lets your back hand steer it during the stroke, as a real cue does, and tells you afterwards how straight you were. On the rest, FREE turns the cue about the rest's head. FREE suits Pro controllers.
3. CUE TURNS WITH YOUR WRIST — Real cue only: the drawn cue rolls when you twist your real one, so its markings stay facing the same way.
4. CUE ROTATION — Real cue only: turns the drawn cue round so its markings face the same way as your real cue's.
5. CUE DEFLECTION — How far the cue ball is pushed off your line when you hit it with side. 0.5° is a low-deflection carbon shaft, 2.0° an ash snooker cue. NONE turns it off.
6. CUE TIP — The width of your tip, 8 to 14 mm. A wider tip lets you put more side on the ball before it slips.
7. STROKE WEIGHT — How hard a given swing hits the ball. Turn it down if your gentle shots come out too hard, up if you struggle to get the ball up the table. It does not change a full-power stroke.
8. CUE CASE — On: a cue for each kind of game, plus a break cue and a jump cue. Set it up in Your cue case.

Moving about

The sticks move the table, so you can bring any shot in front of you without walking. In the game's rooms you can switch them to move you instead and walk about. Walls stop you, and stairs take you up and down.

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1. MOVEMENT IN VR — In the game's rooms: TABLE makes the sticks move the table, CAMERA makes them move you, as in a first-person game.
2. MOVEMENT IN MIXED REALITY — The same, in your own room. TABLE is the one to use there.
3. TABLE MOVEMENT — TWO STICKS: one slides the table, the other turns it. ONE STICK: everything on one stick, for a real cue. SNAP TO THE EDGES: keeps the table lined up with your real desk (see Snap to the edges). ONE STICK, EITHER: the same control on both hands.
4. STICKS — Which stick slides and which turns.
5. SNAP TURN — With SNAP TO THE EDGES: step round the table a side at a time, or point the stick at the side you want.
6. INVERT SLIDE / INVERT TURN — Flip either stick if it moves the table the wrong way for you.
7. MOVE SPEED / TURN SPEED — How fast the sticks move and turn the table.

Comfort

Moving through a virtual room while your body stays still makes some people feel sick. These settings help, and they start on. They only apply in the game's rooms: in your own room, nothing moves you.

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1. COMFORT — Sets all the rows below at once: OFF, SOME or FULL. It starts on FULL. Change any row yourself and this reads CUSTOM.
2. VIGNETTE — Darkens the edges of your view while you move or turn, which stops most people feeling sick.
3. VIGNETTE SHOWS — DARK edges, or a faint GRID of your real room that stays still while the virtual one moves.
4. TURNING — Turn smoothly, or in 30° or 45° steps, one step for each push of the stick.
5. JUMP MOVES — Instead of gliding: push the stick forward, aim the arc at the floor, let go and you are there.
6. STAIRS — Walk up them, or jump straight to the other end.
7. ORBIT — At the table, push the right stick to choose where to stand round the cue ball, and let go to be there. It works in your own room too.
8. ORBIT DISTANCE — How far in front of you the cue ball ends up after an orbit.
9. USE IN — Use these when you move the table too, or only when you walk about.
10. CLUB: SWITCH MOVEMENT — In the club: TABLE movement while you are at a table, CAMERA while you walk about.

Your hands

Where the headset tracks your hands, CueVR draws them as hands instead of controllers. Turn it on or off with YOUR HANDS on Settings → Controls. It needs hand tracking switched on in the headset's settings.

With two controllers, your cue hand holds the butt in a fist, and your bridge hand makes a bridge when you put it down on the cloth: fingers spread, thumb up, the knuckles as high as the cue over them. A hand only makes a bridge at the table, or within 30 cm of it. With a real cue, the cue is in that hand, so only your bridge hand is drawn.

Online and in the club, the others see your hands too, and you see theirs. Choose their colour on the workshop's HEADSET page, under Hands: six skin tones, or any colour you like.

A bare bridge hand with a real cue

Turn on BARE BRIDGE HAND on Settings → Controls and you can put your other controller down and bridge with your own hand. The cue still follows only its controller, and that controller still vibrates. Without a controller in that hand:

A pinch only counts with your hand well above the cloth, so a looped bridge, where your thumb and finger touch, never presses anything or moves the table.

One controller and your bare hand

With controllers, turn on BARE BRIDGE HAND and put your bridge controller down. The controller in your cue hand is the back of your cue, and the cue pivots in the V between your bridge hand's thumb and first knuckle, where a real cue would rest. While you move your hand the pivot follows it. Once your bridge has settled the pivot holds still, so the tracking cannot wobble your aim, and if the headset loses sight of your hand the pivot stays where it was until your hand is seen and settled again. The pinches above work the same way. Your bridge hand is the one opposite your CUE HAND. Turn BARE BRIDGE HAND off to play with two controllers again.

Which hand bridges

With controllers, your bridge hand is always the one opposite your CUE HAND. To play the other way round, change CUE HAND on Settings → Controls. Switching hands by itself could not be made reliable with controllers.

With a real cue and hand tracking, YOUR BRIDGE HAND on Settings → Controls says which hand you bridge with: LEFT, RIGHT or AUTO, which works it out as you play from the bare hand nearer the tip. So with a real cue you can bridge with either hand, and a cue clamped to the controller in your other hand works too.

PINCH TO MOVE turns off moving the table with a pinch in the air, if you would rather a pinch only pressed things.

HANDS NEAR YOUR FACE: set it to HIDDEN and your hands and controllers are not drawn while they are close to your face, so cueing in front of your face with both hands, the trombone way, does not block your view. The others still see them.

Changing the table's height at the table

You can raise or lower the table without going back to the set-up screen. Press a thumbstick in and, while it is held, push it up or down. With two controllers you can also hold Y (B if you play left-handed) and push your cue hand's stick up or down. The height shows on your glass as it changes and is kept for next time. It works with a real cue, with one controller or two, and with the MX Ink stylus.

While you are changing the height, that stick does nothing else. Only a push that starts while you are holding counts, so a stick you are already pushing, or one you hold in to talk, does not move the table.

Playing a shot

You play a shot the way you would at a real table. The cue lies between your two controllers: point it where you want the ball to go and swing your back hand. There is no power meter. How fast you swing is how hard you hit.

Step by step

1. Put the tip on the ball and point the cue where you want the cue ball to go.
2. Pick the spot on the ball. Tip higher for topspin, lower for backspin, left or right for side. Where the tip is, is where you hit.
3. Pull the trigger in your back hand and hold it. This locks the cue's line, so the shot goes where you aimed, even if your hands wander as you swing. (Controls has other ways to lock it.)
4. Swing through the ball, still holding the trigger. A gentle push rolls the ball; a break needs a proper swing. Let go of the trigger after the shot.

You can feather (move the cue back and forth at the ball) as much as you like before you pull the trigger. Nothing counts as a shot until the trigger is held.

Ball in hand

When you have the cue ball in hand, it floats just in front of your back hand. (With a real cue, in front of your free hand.) Carry it where you want it and pull that hand's trigger to put it down. The game keeps it where the rules allow, and clear of the other balls.

Then let go of the trigger. Press it again when you are ready to play the shot. Changed your mind? PICK UP BALL on the pause menu gives it back to you, until you play the shot.

Shots you cannot reach

Move the table, not yourself. At any time, even in the middle of a frame, the left stick slides the table and the right stick turns it. For a shot tight against a cushion, hold your back hand's side trigger and pull that hand back to make the cue shorter. If you play over a real table, snap mode can move you to the shot instead.

The rest

For a shot you cannot stretch to, use the rest, as at a real snooker table. Your bridge hand holds the end of the rest, and the head sits on the cloth. Your cue lies in a notch on the head and you play through it.

The rest is 1.30 m long and stays that length. If you need more reach, an extension screws onto the end. Holding the trigger locks the cue to the rest's line, as it does for a normal shot. With CONTROLLER STROKE set to FREE, your back hand can still steer the cue: it turns about the rest's head. While the rest is out, the trigger does not bring up the pointer for calling a ball or pocket: put the rest away to call.

The lag: who breaks

Some games start a match with a lag, as their rule books say: pool, UK 8-ball, Chinese 8-ball and the Shoot Out. You and your opponent each send a ball up to the top cushion and back at the same time. Yours is the white, theirs is the yellow. Whoever stops nearest the bottom cushion wins the lag.

A ball that does not reach the top cushion, goes in a pocket or off the table loses the lag. If both are no good, or they are level, you lag again.

The winner chooses who breaks: I'll break or Opponent to break. This happens once, at the start of the match, and the breaks in the frames after follow from it.

Snooker and English billiards do not lag: who breaks is drawn, then it takes turns. Practice never lags.

The games

There are 32 games. Eighteen have a card each, and the rest are versions you choose on a card's RULES row. Each is played on its real table with its real balls, and the game referees every rule below for you.

Point at step 1 GAME on Home to see the cards. Each card shows that game's table, racked and ready.

Snooker

12FT TABLE · 15 REDS · 6 COLOURS

Pot a red, then a colour, then another red, and so on. Each red you pot stays down; each colour goes back on its spot until the reds are finished. When the last red and the colour after it are gone, you clear the colours in order from yellow to black.

Values. Red 1, yellow 2, green 3, brown 4, blue 5, pink 6, black 7.

Nominating. When you are on a colour you have to say which one, and the game takes the colour you aim at.

Fouls are hitting nothing, hitting the wrong ball first, potting the cue ball, jumping the cue ball over a ball, and driving any ball off the table. The penalty is four points, or the value of the ball you were on, the ball you hit first, or the highest ball you potted — whichever of those is greatest. The points go to your opponent.

No cushion requirement. Unlike the pool games, a shot that hits the ball on and sends nothing to a cushion and pots nothing is perfectly legal — that is what a safety often is.

After a foul your opponent plays from where the balls are, or from in hand if the cue ball was potted. If the foul leaves them unable to hit the ball on, they get a free ball: they may nominate any ball as the one they are on, and it scores what the real ball on is worth. Once you name a free ball you must hit it first, a foul with it costs what the ball on is worth, and you may not leave your opponent snookered behind it, except when only the pink and black are left.

Miss. Failing to hit the ball on is always a foul, and the referee judges whether it is also a miss — whether your attempt was good enough — at the standard set on the RULES row (see Rules and the referee). When a miss is called your opponent may make you play the shot again from exactly where it was. Failing to escape a snooker counts — that is the most common miss there is. Only a miss lets your opponent put the balls back: if you hit the ball on and the white goes in-off, it is an ordinary foul. No miss is called when either player needs snookers, before or after the shot, so a hopeless frame cannot be dragged out by replays.

Three misses in a row lose the frame, but only misses with the balls put back each time, from a position where you could hit the ball on full. If your opponent plays on from where the balls lie, or takes the shot, the count starts again. When the balls are put back after your second miss, the referee warns you.

The end. Once the black is potted the frame is over. It is also over when only the black is left and one player is more than seven points ahead, once the visit of the player at the table ends: there is no playing on for snookers, but a player still at the table can pot the pink and the black to finish their break. Exactly seven ahead plays on, as the black can still tie it. If the scores are level, the black is respotted and there is a draw: the winner chooses who plays it first, from in hand, and the next score wins.

10-red snooker

10FT TABLE · 10 REDS · 6 COLOURS

Exactly the rules above — reds and colours, the same values, the same fouls, free balls, misses and respotted black — with ten reds instead of fifteen, on a ten-foot table.

A frame takes about half as long as the fifteen-red game.

6-red snooker

7FT TABLE · 6 REDS · 6 COLOURS

Snooker again, unchanged in every rule, with six reds on a seven-foot table.

Every ball is within reach of the cushions and frames are short.

3-red snooker

7FT TABLE · 3 REDS · 6 COLOURS

The same bed, the same balls and the same rules as the six-red game, with a two-row triangle instead of a three. A frame runs to 51 and takes a few minutes, which is what the format is for — a whole match in the time one snooker frame would take.

It shares the snooker RULES row, so the miss standards, the Shoot Out and THE 900 are all available on it.

UK 8-ball

7FT TABLE · REDS AND YELLOWS · BLACK · FOUR RULE SETS

The pub game. The table is open until somebody pots a colour, and that colour becomes theirs; the other player takes the rest. Clear your seven, then pot the black to win.

Fouls, in every rule set: potting the cue ball, hitting nothing at all, hitting the other player's colour first, hitting the black before you are on it, and driving any ball off the table. Jumping the cue ball is not a foul in pool — except at BLACKBALL, whose book forbids it.

The black: potting it before your own colours are gone loses the frame, as does fouling on the shot that pots it.

What differs between PUB, INTERNATIONAL and ULTIMATE POOL is what a foul costs you, whether a shot has to reach a cushion, and what happens if the black goes in off the break. The fourth set, BLACKBALL, is described after the table. Choose on the RULES row of the main menu.

US 8-ball

9FT TABLE · SOLIDS AND STRIPES · 8 BALL

WPA rules. The table is open after the break — whatever you pot first decides whether you are solids or stripes — and once your group is clear you are on the 8.

Fouls are potting the cue ball, hitting nothing, hitting the other group first, hitting the 8 first while the table is open or before your group is clear, hitting anything other than the 8 once you are on it, driving a ball off the table, and — as WPA rules require — playing a shot that neither pots a ball nor sends any ball to a cushion.

Ball in hand. Any foul gives your opponent the cue ball anywhere on the table, not just behind a line. It is a heavy penalty.

The 8. Pot it after your group is clear and you win. Pot it early, or foul on the shot that pots it, and you lose. On the break it is simply put back.

The RULES row carries four ways to play it. WPA 8-BALL is the code above and calls nothing. CALL THE BLACK asks for the last one only, which is how most people play it. CALL SHOT (WPA) is the rule book to the letter: ball and pocket declared on every stroke. KILLER is the pub elimination game on the same table. ULTIMATE POOL USA, at the end of the row, is Ultimate Pool's rules — its break requirement and its golden break — played on this American table.

9-ball

9FT TABLE · 9 BALLS · DIAMOND RACK

You must always hit the lowest numbered ball on the table first, but any ball may then go in. Pot the 9 legally and you win at once — including straight off the break, and including off a combination.

Fouls are potting the cue ball, hitting nothing, hitting anything other than the lowest ball first, failing to pot a ball or send any ball to a cushion after the contact, and driving a ball off the table.

Ball in hand anywhere on the table for the opponent, as at US 8-ball. If the 9 was potted on a foul it goes back on its spot. Three fouls in a row loses the frame.

The push-out. The player who takes the first shot after the break may declare a push-out: they may hit the cue ball anywhere they like, with no need to hit the lowest ball or reach a cushion, and the only foul is potting the cue ball. A 9 potted on a push-out goes back. Afterwards their opponent decides whether to play the resulting position or hand it straight back.

Three rule sets on the RULES row. WPA 9-BALL is the game above. SHOT CLOCK is the same game played to the World Nineball Tour's clock: 30 seconds a shot, 60 for the first shot after the break and for a push-out and the shot after it, and one 30 second extension each a rack (see Playing against the clock). WINNER BREAKS is the same game, with the winner of each frame of a match breaking the next one instead of the break alternating.

9-ball

PUSH OUT

PLAY ON

10-ball

9FT TABLE · 10 BALLS · TRIANGLE RACK

The same bed and the same rotation game as 9-ball: lowest ball first, any ball may then go in, three fouls in a row loses the frame, and the money ball ends it. The rack is what changes — ten balls out of a triangle instead of nine out of a diamond. A diamond opens up off almost any break and a triangle does not, so the table stays cluttered and the lowest ball is more often tied up.

The rack puts the 1 on the foot spot at the apex, the 10 in the middle — the centre of the third row — and the 2 and 3 on the two back corners, rows of one, two, three and four.

Fouls and ball in hand are 9-ball's exactly, including the cushion requirement and the push-out on the first shot after the break. The 10 potted off the wrong ball first is a foul: it goes back on its spot and your opponent has the table.

Slop counts — unless you say otherwise. WPA 10-ball is call-shot: a ball that drops off a lucky contact is spotted rather than scored. Unless you change it, this game counts whatever goes in, and the board tells you so at the start of the frame. Set the RULES row to CALL SHOT (WPA) and it referees the real thing — how you say a call is under Rules and the referee. The third stop, WINNER BREAKS, is call shot (WPA) with the winner of each frame of a match breaking the next.

Chinese 8-ball

10FT TABLE · SOLIDS AND STRIPES · ROUNDED POCKETS

Pool balls and WPA 8-ball rules — identical to US 8-ball above, including ball in hand anywhere for any foul, and including the cushion requirement: a shot that neither pots a ball nor sends any ball to a cushion after the contact is a foul. Played on a ten-foot table built like a snooker table, with tight rounded pockets and dressed in the same napped baize.

Those pockets are the whole difference. They reject a ball hit too hard and punish an approach that is even slightly off. Of the pool games it is the tightest at 1.50 ball widths, and only the two Russian pyramid tables are harder.

The RULES row carries four ways to play it. HEYBALL is the standard code and calls nothing — the obvious shots are exempt by the book, which is how the game is normally played. CALL THE BLACK asks for the last one only. CALL SHOT (CBSA) is the tournament reading, where ball and pocket are declared on every stroke. KILLER is the pub elimination game on the same table.

Straight pool

9FT TABLE · 15 BALLS · 50 UP

14.1 continuous, the old scoring game. There is no ball you must hit, no group and no order: every ball on the table is worth one point, whichever ball it is. You pick one, say it is going down, and if it does you score and carry on. First to 50 (or 25: choose under POINTS on the rules page) wins the frame — the real game is played to hundreds, this one is cut to a frame that fits a session.

Calling a ball. The ball you are aiming at is the ball you have called; there is no menu for it and nothing to press. Whatever your cue is pointing at when you strike is what you have declared. Aim at nothing in particular and you have called nothing, which makes the stroke a safety.

Scoring. Pot the called ball and it scores one, and so does every other ball that happened to go down on the same stroke — the accidental extra is a real part of the game. If the call is not made, nothing on that stroke counts and every ball that went down comes straight back up onto the long string behind the foot spot.

In practice it never runs out. With the opponent set to FREE PRACTICE, when one ball is left the other fourteen are racked again, as in the real game, so you can keep going.

Your visit. Keep making your calls and you stay at the table. Miss one and your opponent is in, and the board says MISSED CALL — or SAFETY, if you called nothing at all.

The pocket is optional. Real 14.1 calls ball and pocket, and the RULES row carries both readings. On CALL THE BALL, the default, you name only the ball and it may go down any pocket, so a called ball that drops in a pocket you never intended still scores. On CALL BALL AND POCKET it has to be the pocket you named as well, and that is the only setting on this game that lights the pocket lamps — how you say a call is under Rules and the referee.

Fouls are potting the cue ball, hitting nothing, driving a ball off the table, and a stroke that neither pots a ball nor sends any ball to a cushion. A foul is minus one, and the opening break is the one stroke that costs minus two — the break has to pot a called ball, or send the cue ball and two object balls each to a cushion. A ball that goes into a pocket counts as reaching a cushion. If the break does that and the white then goes in, it is an ordinary foul, minus one, with ball in hand behind the head string. After a breaking foul your opponent chooses: TAKE THE TABLE as it lies, or MAKE OPPONENT BREAK AGAIN from a new rack. Breaking fouls do not count towards three in a row. Three fouls in a row costs fifteen more and the whole table is racked again with the offender breaking it.

The rerack, which is what continuous means. You never clear all fifteen. When one ball is left the other fourteen go back as a triangle with the apex space empty; the break ball and the cue ball stay exactly where they lie, and that break ball is what you use to open the new rack. Your visit is not interrupted — play carries straight on, which is why the fifteenth stays where it lies while the other fourteen are re-racked. Clear the table outright and all fifteen go back and you break from in hand.

One visit, start to finish. Fourteen balls are still on and you are down on the 12 near the side pocket. You aim at it and strike; it drops, and the 5 it clipped on the way in drops too — two points, and you are still at the table. You line up the 9 next, hit it too thin, and it stays out: MISSED CALL, and your opponent is in. Under CALL THE BALL that is the whole of it. Under CALL BALL AND POCKET you would have had to name the pocket the 12 was going in as well, and a 12 that fell anywhere else would have come straight back up.

Russian pyramid

12FT TABLE · 67 MM BALLS · 15 IVORIES · 8 WINS

Any of the fifteen is on, in any order, and each one you pot scores one. Eight wins: more than half, so it cannot be caught.

Pockets barely wider than the ball. A corner is under five millimetres wider than the ball and a middle fourteen (81 mm, as a tournament table's), on a ball 67 mm across, both measured at the narrowest point. That leaves a couple of millimetres either side of a straight corner pot. The middles are the wider of the two, the opposite of every other table here, and the jaws are cut as a straight mitre rather than the English curve. The point of each jaw is rounded as the federation's rules ask: 5 mm at the corners and 11 mm at the middles, and the cushion's nose stands 42 mm above the cloth.

Club tables. CLUB 12 FT and CLUB 7 FT, in the table picker, have the more forgiving pockets clubs keep for beginners and casual play: 74 mm corners and 83 mm middles on the 12 ft.

The house, not a D. You play from the дом: the whole width of the table behind the baulk line rather than an arc. A pyramid table has no D, so none is drawn.

Three sets of rules, on the card's RULES row: COMBINED (the default), CLASSIC and FREE PYRAMID. All three are first to eight, from the house.

COMBINED is the Russian federation's discipline, and the one most played. The coloured ball is always the cue ball, and nothing is called: every ball potted on a fair stroke scores one.

• Pot the cue ball off a white and it counts too: you take any ball you like off the table for a point (look or point at it and pull the trigger), and play on from in hand in the house. From the house, the first ball you hit must lie outside it. If every ball is in the house, you play from the other end instead.
• The break has to open the pack: a ball potted, or three balls to a cushion, or two to a cushion and one across the centre line. If it does not, your opponent takes a ball for a point and then chooses: play on, make you play on, re-rack and break, or re-rack and make you break again.
• With nothing potted, a stroke is only fair if some ball, after the first contact, comes off a cushion and then touches another cushion, or drives a ball to another cushion, or crosses the centre line; or crosses the centre line and then reaches a cushion, or drives a ball to one. One cushion by itself is not enough.
• A foul — hitting nothing, a stroke that does not do enough, a ball off the table, a first ball struck in the house from hand — gives your opponent any ball off the table for a point. If the cue ball went in or off, they play from the house. Anything a foul potted, and any ball driven off the table, goes back on the spot.

CLASSIC is the game as it was first shipped. Fouls are hitting nothing, potting the cue ball, potting nothing and reaching no cushion, and driving a ball off the table. The penalty is the sting of the game: one of your own potted balls goes back on the table for your opponent to shoot at, and they play from in hand in the house. A frame can go backwards.

Fifteen plain ivories with a small black numeral on both poles, and a red cue ball. With fifteen identical balls, that colour is the only thing telling you which one you are about to strike.

Your opponent plays it as the game it is. On a pocket this size what decides a pot is not how thin the cut is but the angle the object ball ARRIVES at: much past twenty degrees off the middle of the hole it meets a jaw however well it was struck, which is why nothing is ever potted along a cushion here. The computer looks for balls already sitting on a line into a pocket rather than for balls it can cut in, and it will not give up such a line to buy itself a better angle on the next one — which is the trade every other game on the row is built around, and the wrong trade in this one.

FREE PYRAMID: the break is played from the house as usual; after that any ball can be your cue ball — whichever one your cue is lined up on is the one you strike. Every ball you pot counts, including the one you struck once it has hit another ball, and first to eight wins. A foul puts back whatever it potted, and your opponent then takes any ball they like off the table and scores it, naming it the way you name a ball (your CALL setting in the controls), and plays on from where the balls lie. A ball driven off the table goes back on the spot, and it is only a foul if it was the ball you struck.

Pyramid, 7 ft

7FT TABLE · 57.15 MM BALLS · 15 IVORIES · 8 WINS

The same game, every rule unchanged, on the bed people actually own: 1.98 × 0.99 m with 57.15 mm balls, the smallest pairing the federation lists. It does not have a separate card: pick PYRAMID and then the 7 ft bed on the TABLE panel, which brings the smaller ball size with it.

The pockets keep the same clearance rather than the same size — five millimetres at a corner and fourteen and a half at a middle — so it is just as tight as the big one and everything is within reach. This is the one to try pyramid on.

English billiards

12FT TABLE · THREE BALLS · 50 TO 200 UP, OR A CLOCK

Two whites and a red on the full-size snooker table. There are no pockets to clear and no order to keep: you score by cannons, pots and in-offs.

Stroke	Scores
Cannon — your ball touches both the others	2
Pot the other white, or go in-off the white	2
Pot the red, or go in-off the red	3

They all count on the same stroke, so a cannon that pots both balls is seven. An in-off played with a cannon is priced by the ball you struck first — three if that was the red, two if it was the white.

An in-off leaves you in hand and you carry on. A legal stroke that scores nothing ends your turn and the table is played as it lies.

The red always comes back — on the Spot, or the Pyramid Spot if that is occupied, or the Centre Spot if both are. Pot the red over and over with nothing else in the stroke and it goes Spot, Spot, Centre in sequence. A potted white waits for its owner: it is off the table until their turn, and they then play from in hand.

Caps — 75 consecutive cannons and 15 consecutive hazard strokes. Exceeding either is a foul.

Every foul is two to your opponent and never more than two however many rules one stroke broke; the points already made in the break stand. A coup — in hand, cue ball pocketed, nothing struck — is a foul and not an in-off.

What the game is played to is set on the RULES row: 50, 75, 100, 150 or 200 up, or a clock of 5, 10, 15 or 30 minutes. On a clock the referee calls TIME, the stroke already played is allowed to finish and score, and the higher score wins. Level at TIME, the game plays on and the next points scored win it; the board says LEVEL - NEXT POINTS WIN. Against the clock there is also a shot clock of 60 seconds: run out of time and the turn passes with no score and no foul (OUT OF TIME - NO SCORE), so a player who is ahead cannot run the game's clock down standing at the table.

Double baulk. Leave both object balls behind the baulk line while your opponent is in hand and they cannot play straight at either one: from the D the cue ball has to be played out of baulk, and no part of a ball that is in baulk may be struck directly. Breaking that is a foul. If they play out properly and simply fail to hit anything, that is a miss — still two points, but not a foul.

From in hand, always. The same rule applies every time you play from the D, not only on the break: after an in-off, after your opponent pots your ball, after a foul. To reach a ball in baulk you must come off a cushion out of baulk first; coming back off the baulk cushion does not count. The computer plays by it too.

Potting your opponent's ball scores two and you play on from where your own ball lies.

At every change of turn the two whites swap over, so the ball in front of you is always your own.

Bar billiards

142 × 79 CM · NINE HOLES IN THE BED · NO RAIL POCKETS · A RED AND SEVEN WHITES

The odd one out in every way. Four unbroken cushions and no pockets on the rails at all — instead there are nine holes bored through the bed, worth 10 to 200, and three wooden skittles standing among them. Eight balls: one red and seven whites, all the same size. There is no cue ball to scratch. Every white on the table is one, you strike whichever the shot wants, and a white down a hole is a score.

The red scores double, so the red in the 200 is 400.

Where the holes and skittles are

The four holes nearest you are a diamond: the 200 at the front of it with the black skittle standing right in front of that, the two 50s at its sides, and the 100 at its back between the two white skittles. Across the far end is a row of five: 30-20-10-20-30.

Every stroke is played from the D at the near end, so you are always shooting away from the 200. Reaching it means bringing a ball back down the table off a cushion or off another ball, and past a skittle you must not knock over. The easy scoring is the row of five at the far end.

The 200, the 100 and the 10 all sit on the centre line, so a ball sent straight up the middle drops into the first of them it reaches — which is why the 100 and the 10 have to be played on an angle.

A ball has to be rolled in, not driven. Rolled in gently it drops; hit hard it skips the far lip and carries on up the table. The holes are real holes with the cloth turned over the edge and a shaft below, so this is the same free fall a real board gives you.

Bumper pool

142 × 79 CM · TWO CUPS · TWELVE BUMPERS · FIVE BALLS EACH

A small table with no pockets on the rails. There are two cups sunk in the cloth, one at each end on the centre line, and twelve bumpers — rubber-collared posts standing at cushion height — eight of them in a cross across the middle and two guarding each cup.

Five red and five white, and no cue ball. The reds are one player's and the whites are the other's; you strike your own balls, and the one you are pointing at is the one you will play. Your five start at the far end from the cup you are shooting into, so the opening stroke is a bank off a side cushion and not a roll down the table.

One ball of each five is marked, and it has to go down first. Until it does, another of your balls dropping in your cup counts for nothing and comes straight back out onto its spot.

Your own ball in your own cup scores, and you carry on. Your own ball in your opponent's cup is a forfeit: they lift two of theirs and count them, taken at the start of their turn. Put one of their balls down their cup and it counts for them. First to get all five down takes it.

The bumpers turn a ball the way a cushion does — they are rigid posts with a rubber collar, and a ball comes off one with rather less pace than it went in. Most of the table is played around them rather than through them, and the computer plays it the same way: it looks for a line to its cup, and when the posts have taken every straight one away it banks.

Sinuca Brasileira

2.84 × 1.42 M BED · 54 MM BALLS · SEVEN BALLS, 1 TO 7

Brazil's snooker, on the mesão: the federation's table, with leather pocket plates, nets and collectors. There is one red and the six colours, worth 1 to 7, and the lowest ball on the table is the ball on.

The break is from the D and must play the red. If it goes in, or you foul, break again.

A visit. Start on the ball on, or on any other ball — but any other ball has to go in, or it costs you 7. Pot the ball on and it stays down; then any ball is free to try, and potting that lets you try one more, at the same risk of 7. Every ball except the ball on, potted in its turn, goes back on its spot.

Every foul is 7 to your opponent, who can play on or make you play again; the same choice follows a colour you tried and missed.

The end. The frame is over when the 7 goes in, when the 6 goes in with a lead of more than 7, or when a player is too far behind to catch up once the 5 or higher is on. Level after the 7, the 7 alone is played again.

The card's RULES row also offers SIX-RED SNOOKER on the same table: snooker's rules, on the mesão.

Mesinha

2.00 × 1.00 M BED · 50 MM BALLS, 54 MM WHITE · FIVE GAMES

Brazil's bar table, beside SINUCA. The balls are 50 mm with a bigger 54 mm white; the corner pockets are cut to the federation's shape, the middles nearly square, and the cups are the bar table's 64 and 69 mm. The TABLE panel has it in three sizes, sold by their outside measurements: 2.20 × 1.20, 2.20 × 1.30 and 1.90 × 1.20 m.

The break is from anywhere behind the line across the D, and the first ball potted on it decides who has which group. After an in-off the white goes in the D. Hit one of your balls first; pot one of yours and you play on; pot one of theirs and it is a foul, and the ball stays down for them.

A foul costs balls, not points. Balls come off the table, so somebody has fewer left to pot. The game is chosen on the card's RULES row:

Game	Groups	A foul	To win
Par ou ímpar	Odd (3–15) against even (2–14); the 1 is the money ball, on its mark	Takes your opponent's lowest ball off; hitting one of theirs first takes two	Clear your group, then the 1. The 1 too soon loses
Par ou ímpar, 1 ball a foul	The same	Always one of your opponent's balls	The same
Par e ímpar (CBBS)	Fourteen balls, 2–15, odd against even	Takes your opponent's lowest ball off; they play on or make you play again	Pot the last of your group, or be on your last ball when they foul
Mata-mata	1–7 against 9–15; no 8	Your opponent takes one of their own balls off, then plays on or makes you play again	Pot the last of your group
Bola 8	Solids against stripes	As mata-mata	Clear your group, then the 8. The 8 too soon, or off the table, loses

On the scoreboard: once the groups are decided, each player's group is shown beside their score: the 3 or the 10 at mata-mata and bola 8, and the 1 or the 2 with ODD or EVEN at par ou ímpar and par e ímpar.

Taking a ball off. At mata-mata and bola 8, when your opponent fouls you choose which of your own balls comes off: look or point at it and pull the trigger, as at free pyramid. The computer takes off the ball it would find hardest to pot.

Choosing a group. At par e ímpar, a break that pots nothing, or goes in-off, hands the other player the choice of odd or even.

Billiards golf

7FT TABLE · 18 HOLES · PAR 73

Eighteen holes on the pub table, off the old Billiard & Golf scoreboard. Each hole is a fixed arrangement of two, three or four reds inside the rack triangle, with a par of one more than the number of balls. Strokes are the score and fewer is better.

There are no fouls at all. No ball you must hit, no cushion requirement, no turn to lose. Missing everything simply costs you a stroke. Potting the cue ball costs one extra — so that stroke costs two — and the white goes back to the middle of the baulk line with the reds left exactly where they lie. Every other stroke is played from where the ball is.

The scoreboard carries your card as you play. Each player's holes so far, their total, and how they stand against the par of the holes they have played — the number a golfer actually wants, without opening anything.

A hole ends when the last red goes down, or at eight strokes, whichever comes first. The board tells you where you are in golfer's language: "HOLE 4 — 2 FOR PAR", then "THIS FOR PAR", then "THIS FOR BOGEY".

Two players play the same hole from identical racks. The lower score takes the honour and leads off the next hole; a tie leaves the honour where it was. Low total wins the round. The RULES row chooses eighteen holes, the front nine (par 38) or the back nine (par 35).

Or play it as matchplay, which is the same holes scored as a different game. The RULES row has all three rounds a second time — MATCHPLAY 18, MATCHPLAY FRONT 9 and MATCHPLAY BACK 9 — and in those, each hole is won, lost or halved separately, and the totals are thrown away. The board stops talking about par and says where the match is: ALL SQUARE, or who is how many holes up.

And you pick up a hole you cannot tie. Playing second at a hole, once you have taken as many strokes as your opponent needed and the reds are not gone, nothing you do can halve it — so the visit ends there rather than making you play out a hole that is already lost. The card shows a dash where the score would have been, which is what a paper matchplay card carries, and the hole counts as lost exactly as if you had played it out.

It changes what a bad hole costs. In strokeplay a fourteen follows you round for the rest of the round; in matchplay it loses that hole and nothing else, and you can be all square on the next tee having been beaten by nine strokes on the last one. It also ends when it is decided rather than when the holes run out — more holes up than there are holes left and the match is over, which the board calls in golfer's shorthand: 3 AND 2.

Paul

6FT HOME TABLE · 42 MM BALLS · SCATTERED AT RANDOM · 54 MM POCKETS

There is no rack. The whole snooker set — fifteen reds, six colours and the white — goes onto the cloth at random, differently every game, so there is no opening to learn and nothing to break. The white lies wherever it landed.

The break hits nothing. The opening stroke must touch no ball and no cushion. Touch either, or pot anything, and it is a foul worth two shots to your opponent.

Then alternate visits, and pot whatever you can reach — there is no ball on and no order. A red is one, a colour is two, the black is four, and everything potted stays down: nothing is ever spotted. A miss is not a foul; it simply ends your visit. An in-off is a foul, worth two shots to your opponent, and the ball it potted scores nothing. Two shots in hand are spent by potting, and after a scratch the white goes in the D, which is the only thing the D is for in this game.

You win by leading by more than is left. Twenty-nine points go on the table at the start, and the frame ends the moment one player is further ahead than the remaining balls can make up. If the table empties with the scores level, the black goes back on its spot and you play for it.

Carom — five games and no pockets at all

10FT TABLE · NO POCKETS · 61.5 MM BALLS · FIVE GAMES ON THE RULES ROW

A new table with nowhere for anything to fall: four plain cushions all the way round. Nothing is ever potted, and every point is a cannon — your cue ball touching both the other balls in one stroke. You and your opponent each have a cue ball of your own, with a red between you, and the cloth is fast and the cushions the liveliest in the game, because the game is played off them.

Carom is one card on the game row; which of its five games you play is the RULES row, exactly as Killer sits on the 8-ball games. They differ in what the cannon must do on the way:

STRAIGHT RAIL	A plain cannon scores. First to 30.
1-CUSHION	One cushion before the second ball. The step between straight rail and the professional games, and the one UMB discipline CueVR was missing. First to 20.
2-CUSHION	The cue ball must touch two cushions before it reaches the second ball. First to 15.
3-CUSHION	Three cushions before the second ball — the professional game, and very hard. First to 10.
FOUR-BALL	The Korean game, with a second red on the table: a point is a cannon on both reds, and your opponent's cue ball is the ball you must not touch. First to 15.

Each of the five can also be played to 10, 15 or 20: choose under POINTS on the rules page, and each game keeps its own choice. Five-pin is always played to 50. Online, both players play to the host's choice; tournaments and careers keep the usual targets.

One pocket

9FT TABLE · 15 BALLS · 8 UP · US 8-BALL'S RULES ROW

The most tactical game on a pool table, and unlike anything else here. You own one of the two far corner pockets and your opponent owns the other. A ball is worth something to whoever owns the hole it went down and to nobody else, and eight of the fifteen wins it.

The breaker chooses, after the break. Not before — you pick your pocket once you have seen what the break left, which is how the game is played and half of what makes the opening stroke worth thinking about. The board asks you and the table waits; the other corner is then your opponent's. Against the computer it chooses for itself, and quickly.

Which pocket is yours is lit on the table — yours steady green, your opponent's steady red, both lit for the whole frame. The other four pockets stay dark, which is exactly their status: a ball down one of those is spotted and your visit is over.

A ball in your opponent's pocket scores for them, and there is no way to refuse it. A ball down is down.

A foul costs a ball, not just the turn. One of your scored balls comes back out on to the table, and if you have none yet you owe one, taken from the first ball you do score. That is what makes the game the famous crawl it is: two players nudging balls a millimetre at a time, because a foul is more expensive than a missed chance.

Rotation, and the games on its board

9FT TABLE · 15 BALLS · 61 UP · US 8-BALL'S RULES ROW

The oldest of the rotation family and the reason the family has that name. The lowest ball on the table is always the one you must hit first, and a ball is worth its number. The numbers come to 120, so 61 wins — and the frame can be over with balls still up, which is the whole shape of it. The 15 alone is a quarter of what you need, so a player who took the low balls cheaply can still lose to one who took the high ones.

The rack is the same as rotation: the 1 at the apex nearest you, the 2 and 3 in the far corners, the 15 buried in the middle. The ball you are obliged to hit is the closest one, the next two lowest are as far away as the table allows, and the biggest score cannot be had cheaply.

ROTATION 61	The classic game. A foul puts the incoming player behind the head string, which is a real penalty: you may not shoot at anything in front of the line, so a pack at the far end has to be reached the long way.
FILIPINO ROTATION	The same board, two rules changed, and they are the two that decide how it feels. A foul gives ball in hand anywhere, which hands the table over rather than making you travel — and three fouls in a row loses the frame, so a player who cannot reach the ball on cannot simply keep handing it back.
15-BALL	Rotation without the rotation: the same scoring and the same 61, and nobody telling you what to hit. You pick which of the big balls to go after rather than working your way up to them. Its rack is the mirror, with the 15 at the apex.

Cowboy pool

9FT TABLE · THREE BALLS · 101 UP · US 8-BALL'S RULES ROW

Only the 1, the 3 and the 5 are on the table, spread down the bed on the foot, centre and head spots, and there are a hundred and one points to be had off them three ways at once: pocketing, cannons and in-offs.

To 90	Everything scores. A ball pocketed is worth its number, a cannon off two balls is one, and an in-off is one.
91 to 100	Cannons only. Pocketing scores nothing from here.
The 101st	A cannon with the 1 struck first, and nothing else will do.

And you cannot overshoot. A stroke worth more than the phase has left scores nothing and your visit is over. The ceiling before ninety is ninety, not 101, so a player on 88 cannot simply take the 5 — they need the 1, or a cannon, or an in-off.

The balls always come back to their spots.

Bank pool, Honolulu and speed pool

9FT TABLE · 15 BALLS · US 8-BALL'S RULES ROW

Three more games on the same bed, each built on refusing you one ordinary thing.

BANK POOL	Call the ball and the pocket, and bank it in. Only the called ball, banked into the called pocket, scores — one ball a stroke. Anything else that drops goes back on the table, and that is not a foul, so if your called ball went in you keep the table. The break is not called, and what it banks in counts. What a bank is. The ball must come off a rail that does not run into the pocket it drops in. A rail is the cushion between two pockets, jaws included, so off the far side of the table is a bank, and so is off the jaw of a different pocket. A ball that runs along one of the pocket's rails, or clips that pocket's jaw on the way in, has not been banked. First to 8, and a foul costs a ball as it does at one pocket.
HONOLULU	A straight-in pot scores nothing. The ball has to arrive the hard way — off a bank, off a kick (the cue ball finding a cushion before it reaches a ball), or through another ball as a combination or carom. A bank is judged as it is at bank pool: off a rail that does not run into the pocket. The one shot every other game on this table is built around is the only one this game does not have. A straight pot is not a foul: it goes back on the table, and if you scored one properly on the same stroke you keep the table. First to 8.
SPEED POOL	Not a frame at all. You each clear a full rack and the clock is the score — lowest time wins. There is no turn to take from anybody and nothing to defend: any ball, any pocket, as fast as you can get to the next one. Potting the cue ball is not a foul — it comes back in your hand and the clock keeps running, which costs you more than a lost turn would.

Bowlliards

9FT TABLE · 10 BALLS · BOWLING CARD

Pool kept on a ten-pin bowling card, and the only game here besides golf that you play against a card rather than against the person opposite. Ten balls, ten frames, and a maximum of 300.

A frame is two innings to clear the rack. Clear all ten in the first and it is a strike; clear them across both and it is a spare; anything else scores the balls you potted. The break is free — nothing on it counts, everything goes back up, and a scratch costs nothing — and then you call ball and pocket on every stroke.

The scoring is a real bowling card, which means a frame cannot be totalled when you finish it. A strike is worth ten and the next two innings; a spare ten and the next one. So the box stays blank until the balls that score it have been thrown, exactly as on paper, and the tenth frame earns two extra innings for a strike and one for a spare.

The board shows the five frames you are in, marked the way a bowler marks them: X a strike, / a spare, - a miss. MENU, then SCORECARD, for all ten.

There is nothing to play safe for — you are clearing your own rack and the table changes hands when your inning ends, not before — so the machine never plays safe at it either. It takes every pot however thin and chooses between them by where the cue ball finishes, which is what clearing ten actually asks of you.

The RULES row offers CANADIAN house rules as well as the standard game. Under those you do not call anything — no ball, no pocket, pot what you can. The break is a scoring stroke: whatever goes down on it stays down and counts towards your first inning. You play the white from wherever it finishes rather than taking it in hand, unless you potted it — a scratch on the break costs you the position and nothing else. And failing to reach a cushion is still a foul, but the incoming player takes the table as it lies instead of with the ball in hand.

Try it with the TENPIN ball set: ivory pins with the two red rings round the neck, numbered one to ten as pins are, and a swirled bowling ball for the cue ball.

Cribbage pool

9FT TABLE · 15 BALLS · US 8-BALL'S RULES ROW

The numbers on the balls are worth nothing by themselves. What scores is a cribbage — two balls totalling fifteen, potted one after the other inside a single inning. There are exactly seven of them in a rack: 1+14, 2+13, 3+12, 4+11, 5+10, 6+9 and 7+8. Five cribbages takes the game, and the rack is not played out once somebody has them.

In succession is the whole game. Pot the 4 and you are on a cribbage: the next stroke must pot the 11, there is no option to leave it, and failing is a foul that spots the unpaired ball and ends your inning. Pot two openers on one stroke and you owe both — take them in whichever order you like, but keep going until the list is empty.

The 15 pairs with nothing and can start no cribbage. Potted early it is spotted and that is not a foul; once every other ball is down it becomes a cribbage by itself, and it decides a game that is level.

The board carries all seven fifteens. A pair struck through has gone, a pair lit is open, and the ball you MUST POT is named beside them — which matters, because while you owe one it is the only legal shot on the table.

The balls each game is played with

Every game uses the balls it is really played with, at the official size and weight. English pool is the odd one out: its cue ball is smaller and lighter than the object balls, a convention that comes from coin-operated tables needing to tell the white apart to return it. You will feel it — a light cue ball checks back off a full contact instead of stunning dead, and it throws the object ball further when you use sidespin. Billiards golf is played on that same pub table and inherits it.

Match length is set on the main menu: one frame, or best of 3, 5, 7, 9 or 11. The break alternates between players and the score carries through the match. A player who cannot catch up will concede rather than play it out.

Two games end on something other than a score: bar billiards ends when its clock runs out, and billiards golf ends when the round does.

Practice and challenges

Two ways to play without an opponent.

Free practice gives you the table on your own with no rules and no scoring. Put the balls wherever you like and hit them.

Practice

The pause menu in practice

CHALLENGES

The target

A chalk bullseye on the cloth to play the cue ball to: a 50 in the middle, then 20 and 10 rings, 26 cm across. Tap MENU in practice or a challenge and choose Target on; it is chalked where you last left it. Move the target puts it in your free hand, the same as a ball in hand: take it anywhere on the table and pull the trigger to put it down. Target off rubs it out.

When the cue ball comes to rest inside the target, the ring it stopped in — the 50, the 20 or the 10 — lights up. It goes out as soon as the cue ball moves again or you move the target.

A challenge can have its target. In the layout editor, PUT THE TARGET ON, then pull the trigger near it to pick it up and carry it like a ball. It is saved with the challenge and chalked on the table whenever the challenge is played; your practice target comes back when the challenge ends.

Challenges set you a goal on a fixed layout: a position to play from, a ball to pot, a score to reach or a table to clear. Each one is judged over a single visit, so a miss ends the attempt and you start again.

VS → Challenge on the main menu opens them as a page of cards; in free practice they are a chip on the pause menu. Each card is a picture of the layout with its name, what it asks and your best result underneath. Point at one and pull the trigger to open it. The first two cards are always there: THE TIMED SIX, six reds against the clock, and MAKE ONE. You can keep thirty-two challenges of your own.

A challenge's page

Making your own

MAKE ONE, or Workshop → Challenge, opens the layout editor with the balls as they are on the table. So the quickest way to make a challenge is to set a position up in practice, or stop at one you keep getting wrong, and press MAKE ONE. A table with no balls on it starts from a full rack.

From a code

FROM A CODE, on the MAKE ONE card, takes a challenge somebody has shared: type the six letters and press GET THE CHALLENGE. It joins your cards and opens on its page. Or pick one in the gallery, where players put the challenges they want others to try.

Leaving one and coming back

Go to Home in the middle of a challenge and it waits for you. Home names it and offers CONTINUE, which puts you back at the table where you left it, and END CHALLENGE, which takes you to the challenge list. Tapping MENU goes back to the table too.

A match position

Set out a position by hand, from a classic match or one of your own, and see how you would have done. MAKE ONE, lay the balls out, then on its page choose WIN THE FRAME or WIN THE MATCH. Two chips under the goals set it up:

The rest is read off the balls: at snooker, a red is on while any are left, then the colours in order. MOVE THE BALLS still works. PLAY IT puts the position on the table, and it is judged at the end of the frame or the match. Share it by code like any challenge.

Win from here

Or take the position from a match you are playing against the computer. Press MAKE A CHALLENGE on the pause panel, or on a match in SAVED MATCHES, and the balls, the score and the game are kept as they stand. Choose who you play and what the score is, then WIN THE FRAME or WIN THE MATCH from there.

Opponents

Eight computer players. They differ in how straight they hit the ball, how much they think about where the cue ball finishes, how much risk they take, and how well they get out of trouble. The bars below are their actual settings.

Rookie Rick

Rating 1278 · beginner

Takes on everything and misses most of it. Hits the ball far too hard and has no idea where the cue ball will finish. Start here.

Aiming

Power control

Position

Spin

Aggression

Steady Sue

Rating 1382 · cautious

Will not take on a pot she does not fancy, and plays safe instead. You will not get many free chances, but she will not punish you hard either.

Aiming

Power control

Position

Spin

Aggression

Professor Pete

Rating 1428 · thinker

Plans properly and is good at breaking up awkward clusters, but he is not the straightest potter. He will build a break if you let him.

Aiming

Power control

Position

Spin

Aggression

Hustler Hank

Rating 1447 · aggressive

Fast and attacking. Hits everything with pace and takes on pots other players would leave alone. Streaky, and dangerous when it comes off.

Aiming

Power control

Position

Spin

Aggression

Clara CueQueen

Rating 1501 · all-rounder

Accurate, balanced and hard to fault. The first opponent who will make you work for the frame rather than wait for a mistake.

Aiming

Power control

Position

Spin

Aggression

Deadshot Dave

Rating 1633 · potter

Pots nearly everything he looks at, from anywhere. He does not think much about the next shot, so his breaks tend to end by themselves.

Aiming

Power control

Position

Spin

Aggression

Iron Nina

Rating 1715 · the toughest

Very straight and very controlled. She plays position on every shot, breaks clusters open when she needs to, and will punish a loose safety.

Aiming

Power control

Position

Spin

Aggression

The Machine

Rating 1616 · no mistakes

Aims perfectly and thinks about every shot for as long as it takes. It makes centuries at snooker regularly, with a best break of 134.

Aiming

Power control

Position

Spin

Aggression

Records on Home keeps your results against each player and your best breaks. At pool it also counts your break-and-runs (frames won from your own break before the other player gets a shot), and at 9-ball your golden breaks. Records only count on the standard tables: see Which table.

Their cues

At the table with you

At their shot they walk round the outside of the table to it, get down on it, and stay down a moment after the stroke. After a pot they step back with the cue held ready and carry it round to the next shot; after a miss or a safety they stand it upright again and go back to their place. In doubles, teams and Killer you see one computer player's cue at a time: the one at the table, or while you are playing, the one who plays next.

Settings → Opponents → THEIR CUES BETWEEN SHOTS turns this off: HIDDEN shows a computer player's cue only while it is down on the shot.

Doubles and Killer

After a foul, PLAY AGAIN puts the player who fouled back at the table. On a Killer game, step 3 VS has a PLAYERS row instead, from 2 to 8, and a pick for each player. The order of play is drawn, and the scoreboard shows everyone's lives.

How they play

They aim for the part of the pocket a ball can really go in, and on a cut they miss on the safe side. With ball in hand they put the cue ball where they have a shot.

They know every game. At English billiards they play cannons and in-offs as well as pots. At bar billiards they play round the skittles and never risk the black one.

At snooker they break off like a snooker player: thin off the end red, round the table and back into baulk. The stronger players get it right; the weaker ones often leave you something.

Rules and the referee

The rules are enforced for you, and called out loud. You do not have to keep score or remember what is on.

The top line of the board names the game and its rules, such as UK 8-BALL · BLACKBALL or SNOOKER · MISS: PRO.

The referee knows every rule of every game: reds and colours in order at snooker, free balls and misses, your group at pool, the two shots at UK 8-ball, the push-out at 9-ball, cannons and in-offs at billiards, the skittles at bar billiards, and so on.

The break has to do something

Most games do not let you just tap the pack. What a break has to do depends on the game:

The rules of the game you are playing

Not sure why something was a foul? Press MENU and choose RULES OF THIS GAME. It shows a short rule book on the scoreboard: what you are trying to do, how you score, what a foul costs and how the frame ends. It covers only the rules you are playing (PUB, say, not all four UK 8-ball rule sets). If it runs past one page, hold the trigger on it and drag to scroll.

Hold X at any point and the board is replaced by a live photograph of the table from above, for as long as you hold it.

Playing against the clock

Some rule sets are timed. The break-off has no shot clock, and a timed frame or match starts when the break-off is struck. After that, the shot clock starts when the table becomes yours and runs while you line up; the scoreboard counts it down, it turns amber under ten seconds and red under five, and each of the last five seconds beeps. When it runs out you hear a klaxon and the board says OUT OF TIME. Online, a menu does not stop it: you cannot pause your opponent's clock from your headset. When you are given ball in hand, you get ten extra seconds on that visit to place the ball.

Online, only the player at the table can run out of time, and only their game calls the end of a timed frame; the other player's game takes it from theirs, so both always agree on the result.

When your opponent fouls

You are asked what you want to do. You can play on from where the balls have finished, or make your opponent play the shot again. If a miss was called and the table can be put back as it was, that is offered too. The referee announces what you chose.

Foul and a miss

At snooker, failing to hit the ball on is always a foul. The referee also decides whether it was a miss: whether you made a good enough attempt. If it was a miss, your opponent can have the balls put back and make you play it again.

How strict the referee is, is set on the snooker RULES row:

How the referee decides. He looks at the ball on that you came nearest to, and asks two things:

He allows more room when you were snookered (three times as much) and on longer shots, as a real referee does. Three misses in a row lose the frame, but misses from a snooker do not count towards the three, and one good attempt starts the count again.

The same row has SHOOTOUT and THE 900. These are different, timed games with no miss rule: see The games.

Calling a pocket

To call a shot is to say, before you play it, which ball you are potting and in which pocket. Four games can ask for it, set on their RULES row.

What the lamps mean. There is one behind each pocket:

The called ball also gets a chalk ring on the cloth. Nothing is called on the break, and the scoreboard says NO CALL NEEDED.

To call it yourself, or change the game's choice, use one of three ways, chosen on CALL A POCKET on Settings → Controls:

The computer players call their pockets too, and you see the lamp light up as they play.

Calling the break

At snooker, English billiards, Sinuca Brasileira, carom and straight pool the referee calls your break as you build it: the running total after each scoring shot.

Turning the referee off

Settings → Sound → REFEREE sets a female voice, a male voice, or no voice at all. The scoreboard stays either way.

When the match is over

After every frame and match you get the figures, side by side as on TV: pot success, long pots, safety success, breaks of 20, 30, 50 and 100, average break, table time, fouls, and each player's best break shown as the balls they potted, in order.

In a match the break takes turns from frame to frame, except under WINNER BREAKS (9-ball and 10-ball), where the winner of each frame breaks the next.

Records

MATCH STATS

Which table

Every game can be played on more than one table, and the table changes how it plays: the size of the pockets, the speed of the cloth, the size and shape of the bed. Choose it on TABLE, the first picture on the strip along the foot of Home. Your choice is kept for each game separately.

Bigger or smaller

Many games come in more than one size: 6 ft, 7 ft, 9 ft, 10 ft and 12 ft, where that game is really played on them. Only the bed changes size. The balls and pockets stay the same, so a smaller table is an easier one. The lines and spots are drawn to suit each size.

UK 8-ball also has the 6 ft and 7 ft nets tables: string nets under the pockets and a snooker-style cloth, as in the odd pub or pool club.

Pro, Tournament and Club

The standard table comes in three versions. They differ in how big the pockets are and how fast the cloth is. Each card in the picker gives its pocket sizes in millimetres, corners first, measured at the narrowest point.

A few games have only one table, marked ONE TABLE, AS BUILT: the two Russian pyramids (their pockets are barely wider than the ball), bar billiards, Paul and carom (no pockets at all).

Shaped tables

After the three standard tables come four shapes: L-SHAPEDHEXAGONOCTAGONROUND. Play a real frame of snooker round a corner. Every game can use them except bar billiards, English billiards and carom. The pockets keep the game's size, so the pots are no harder; the angles are what change.

L-SHAPED

HEXAGON

OCTAGON

ROUND

Your own tables

Build a table in the workshop, choose which games it is for, and press KEEP THIS TABLE. It then appears in the picker for those games, named after what it is, such as L 84MM or ROUND 112MM. You can keep twelve. FORGET IT deletes one.

Playing a friend

Up to eight headsets share one table, on the same wi-fi or over the internet. Anyone else can watch.

Choose Online on step 3 VS. Pick how to play (below). If you host, you then choose the format and how many players, and press OPEN THE ROOM. If you join, you play the host's game.

The computer plays every place nobody takes, and plays on for anyone who leaves. The host chooses the format and everyone in the room plays it.

Starting a game

Everyone sees the same table, balls and score, and you see your opponent's cue as they play. After a foul, the player fouled against makes the choice.

If your connection drops

If your connection drops during a frame, your place is kept for five minutes and the game tries to get you back in by itself. If CueVR itself closed, or the headset restarted, start it again: Home and the Online page offer REJOIN YOUR MATCH while your place is kept, and nothing else can be started until you rejoin or the place runs out. A club table's match takes you back to the same table, and a tournament match back into the tournament's room. Not back in time, and the frame is your opponent's.

If your opponent leaves, or does not come back in time, while you are at the table, you play on to the end of your visit. The frame and the match are yours when it ends, with every point and your whole break counted.

Results

Every online frame and match is recorded when both players' games agree on it, with each player's figures and breaks; those are what the club's honours boards are made from. A frame somebody walks out of is kept too, as a win for the player who stayed, with both players' figures and every break made in it.

Winner stays on

A room for a group. Two play a frame; the winner stays at the table and the next in the queue comes on to play them, and the challenger breaks. People come and go as they like, and the room runs until everyone has left. Only people play: there are no computer players in it.

• The host sets it up: the most players allowed, and a cap on how many frames in a row a winner may stay on — none, 2, 3 or 5. At the cap the winner goes to the back of the queue too.
• The scoreboard keeps count: everyone in queue order with their wins, the two at the table lit, and who is next.
• A pound coin on the rail for each player waiting, as in a pub. It moves out of the way if your cue comes near it.
• Between frames the screen says what happens to you next: you stay on and who you play, you play next, you play the winner, or where you are in the queue. The next frame starts by itself a few seconds later. LEAVE THE ROOM takes you out.
• Join a room that is already playing and you go on the back of the queue.
• Anyone can leave, the player who set the room up included, and the room carries on for everyone else. At a club table the table stays in the club for the others to join. If the player running the room loses their connection or their game closes, their opponent takes over, and the frame waits for them to come back.

Watching

Any game being played online can be watched. BROWSE lists rooms in two columns: those open to join, and those being played, each with WATCH. If you have a room's code, WATCH sits beside JOIN on the code screen. Every format can be watched: one against one, doubles, teams, killer and winner stays on.

A watcher sees the table, the strokes and the score as the players do, but cannot play: you hold no cue, the game, its rules and its table are locked, and there is no CONCEDE. The board says WATCHING and names the players. STOP WATCHING on the pause menu takes you home.

Down the club

A snooker club online, for up to sixteen people at once. Go in from the Online page: the DOWN THE CLUB card says how many are in and who, and is lit while anyone is. When a club is full, a second one opens. While you are in the club, the card says so and cannot be chosen. Point at the card and the bar along the bottom of the panel lists everyone in the club, a line at a time, changing every few seconds.

You come in at the bar end, just inside the door, looking down the room at the tables, with no table of your own yet. Everyone else is where they really stand, in their headset with their name over it, and you hear them from there. Free tables are lit lower than tables in play, so you can see at a glance where the games are.

What the club's tables can be: the standard rectangular tables only, at any of their sizes, with their pockets and nets. L-shaped, round and many-sided beds, and tables from the workshop, cannot be used in the club; your own choice is kept and comes back when you leave. Bar billiards and five-pin cannot be played in the club.

A hosted table is the host's: their game, their rules and their table's design appear on it for everyone in the club, so you can see what is being played before you join.

• Watching: you see every shot at every table as it is played, with the player holding their cue. You hear each table from where it stands, quieter the further away it is. A table's glass shows whether you are standing or sitting.
• Moving about: you walk the club in camera mode, and the sticks move the table once you take one. Back on your feet, it is camera mode again. MOVEMENT on the pause menu switches it whenever you like, and Settings → Comfort → CLUB: SWITCH MOVEMENT turns the switching off. In mixed reality with one stick, see walking on one stick.
• Mixed reality: ROOM on the pause menu offers THE CLUB or YOUR ROOM. In your room, the club's tables and people stand round you in mixed reality. You always come in to the club's room.
• Club tables are not listed in Browse. They are joined from the club.
• Your scoreboard hangs on the wall board at the head of your table.
• When a match ends, the host keeps the table, practising on it, and the others go back to standing in the club. If someone leaves during a match, the match ends as any online match does, and you stay in the club.
• Home in the club: BACK TO THE CLUB, or LEAVE THE CLUB. While you practise at a table it offers CONTINUE, FREE TABLE (gives the table back, for when its glass is hard to reach) and LEAVE CLUB. In a match it offers CONTINUE, END MATCH (out of the match, still in the club) and LEAVE CLUB. If ending or leaving would lose you a frame, your place in the queue or a match, you are asked to confirm first.
• Everyone in the club is listed on the pause menu with HIDE, MUTE and REPORT. Voice chat covers the whole club.
• HIDE ME, beside MUTE ME on the pause menu: nobody sees your headset, hands or cue until you press it again, so you can walk between the tables without bothering the players.
• Settings → Graphics → CLUB TABLES: FULL draws the other tables just as yours is drawn; SIMPLE draws their cloth more plainly, and is quicker.
• If your connection drops, the game goes back into the club by itself: the glass says LOST THE CLUB - RECONNECTING and then BACK IN THE CLUB. While it is reconnecting, Down the club says reconnecting, and pressing it tries straight away.
• If CueVR closed during a match at a club table, start it again: the Online page has REJOIN YOUR MATCH while your place is kept, and it takes you back into the same club, to the same table.
• Every table has its number in gilt on the light over it, 1 to 4 down the room.

The honours boards

The club's records hang on its walls, in gilt on mahogany: the most frames won, the best win rate (over 20 frames or more), break-and-runs, clearances, and the highest break at straight pool, 15-red, 10-red, 6-red and 3-red snooker and English billiards. They are the top ten of all time, from online frames both players' games agreed on, with both players' Meta accounts proved, so a record is the account's and not a name anyone can type.

Below each board, on the sideboards at both ends of the room, stands that record's trophy. Each finished month's winner is engraved on its plates, from November 2026; the plates keep the twelve most recent months. When two or more players finish a month level at the top, they are joint winners: all their names go on the plate, and each of them gets the month's trophy in their cabinet. Squeeze a grip near a trophy to pick it up and read it.

The TOURNAMENT WINNERS board, by the door across from the blackboard, lists every club tournament's champion, newest first. On the pedestal in front of it stands the latest tournament's trophy, engraved with the tournament, its day and its champion.

Club tournaments

Knockout tournaments, organised by the club and run on the night by the game itself. When one is coming up, the club's blackboard by the door has it: the name, the day and time (in your own time zone), the game and its rules, the races, and who has signed up.

The tournament's tile on the Online page sits beside DOWN THE CLUB. Before the night it says you're in and when it starts, or sign up in the club if you have not entered.

On the night

• Have the current CueVR. An older version is turned away at the door and told to update.
• The tournament room opens 15 minutes before the start. It is a copy of the club opened just for the tournament, with its four tables, not the club you usually go to. Go in from the tournament's tile on the Online page, which now says join and how many minutes are left. Anyone who has not entered sees watch instead.
• The draw is made at the start, with every entrant in it. At least three players have to be in the room at the start, or the night is called off.
• Matches are called when both players are in the room and a table is free. The referee calls them by draw number: "Player 3 and player 6 to table 2". Your glass says GO TO TABLE with the number. The lower draw number hosts. The final is always on table 1. Every table's number is in gilt on the light canopy over it, 1 to 4 down the room, in the club as well as a tournament's room.
• Every match is played on the tournament's table and look (its size, body, cloth and balls), whatever you have chosen yourself. Yours come back when you leave the room.
• The blackboard keeps the draw: every round, every score, and the champion. It keeps the last tournament's result until the next one is announced.
• The champion's trophy goes in their trophy cabinet, engraved with the tournament's name, the day and their name. Win the same tournament again and it is engraved again.
• Records → Tournaments lists every tournament you have entered: how far you got, and each of your matches with the score. Open one for its whole draw.

Stepping out, and dropping out

A match is never handed to the computer: someone who does not come back loses it on a walkover.

Watching: anyone can watch from the tile once the room is open. Watchers are not seen, and they can hear the players talking but cannot be heard themselves.

Voice chat

Talk to the other players in any online room. It is off until you turn it on: Settings → Sound → YOUR MICROPHONE.

• The headset asks for the microphone the first time you turn it on. Say no and nothing is sent.
• THE OTHERS' VOICES, under it, sets how loud the other players are, up to twice as loud as they spoke.
• You hear each player from where they stand at the table: from their side, and quieter the further away they are. Turn VOICES FADE WITH DISTANCE off to hear everyone at the same level; you still hear which side they are on.
• IN THE ROOM, on the pause menu online, lists everyone with a light while they are talking, and what your own microphone is doing. MUTE silences a player for you at once. REPORT tells us about a player, with the reason.
• MUTE ME, beside IN THE ROOM, stops anyone hearing you until you press UNMUTE ME. Your microphone setting stays as it was.
• The scoreboard marks whoever is talking with a green mark on the corner of their ball.
• Watchers hear the players, but nobody hears a watcher.

Your voice goes only to the people in the room, and it is not recorded or kept. The privacy policy has the details.

Career

A player's career on one of eight tours, from a club league to the top of the sport. Up to twelve careers are kept at once.

Career

Career

Starting one

Starting a tour career

NEW CAREER

A simple career

ACHIEVEMENTS

More tours

Four tours are run the way their sports really run, not like the snooker tour:

In three-cushion, a group round's draw shows the groups four to a page, starting with yours. Each group has its table (played, won, points difference) and that round's two matches. Once the groups are over, the two going through stay bright. Pick a player to open their page.

The hub

The career hub

After a match

An event's draw

PLAY NEXT MATCH puts it on the table. SIMULATE TO MY NEXT MATCH plays every other match up to your next one. When you have a match already started, the first button says CONTINUE MATCH and takes you back to it. When you have no events left in the season, it says FINISH THE SEASON: it plays the rest of the season out and opens the review.

When an event finishes

CONTINUE

CALENDAR

RANKINGS

HOW THEY PLAY

STATS

SEASON

Leagues and divisions

A club league is played in divisions of up to ten. Each player's page has DIVISIONS WON, the divisions below the top they have won, and under PAST SEASONS where they finished in the league each season, for example DIVISION 8, 1ST OF 10. Winning the top division is the league's title, and counts among the player's titles.

The league's page has THIS SEASON and LAST SEASON: last season's tables, every division, as they finished. Before the new season's league begins, the page shows last season's.

The players

Every player on a tour has their name, nickname, country and cue, and plays at a set strength, measured by playing games in CueVR. The cue they strike with is the one on their page. You will meet the same players again season after season.

The Atlantic Cup

On the US tours, Europe plays the Americas each season: singles, scotch doubles and five-a-side team matches. Where your side has you in a doubles or team match, the computer plays your team-mates.

Played to the end

A career match cannot be ended or racked again half-way through. There is no END MATCH or RE-RACK in a career. To stop, use PAUSE MATCH or SAVE AND LEAVE (see Saving and resuming) and come back to it. Career matches count towards your records, apart from doubles and team matches.

Where the events are played

Turn on Tour matches at the event's venue under Environment → Surroundings, and every tour and event match is played in its event's room instead of yours. The leagues are in pubs and clubs, the county and national events in clubs and television studios, the pro tour in arenas and studios, and the majors in big arenas and theatres. The same event is always in the same room.

• The venue puts out its table and balls for the match: championship cloth on tournament or mahogany timber at the pro snooker venues, a coin-op cabinet in a pub. Your own table comes back when the match ends.
• The trophy you are playing for is on show beside the table, on its stand.
• The World Championship snooker final is always played in the Arena.
• Your own room for this one match: pick it from the ROOM chips on the pause menu. Event venue on the same row takes you back.

With it off, which is how it starts, tour matches are played in whatever room you have chosen. Two things happen either way: the World final is in the Arena, and the venue's crowd is heard — see The crowd.

Events

Any event from the tours by itself, without a career: a pub league, a ranking event, a World Championship or the Atlantic Cup.

Events

The event hub

DRAW

EVENTS RECORD

EVENTS

NEW EVENT

RESULTS

An event match is played to the end in the same way as a career match: no END MATCH and no RE-RACK, and PAUSE MATCH to leave it.

Trophies

Every event has its trophy, the same one every season, with its winners engraved on it. Win one and it stands on the table. A career keeps its titles on shelves in the room.

Winning a title

The trophies

The event's name is on the front plate. Down the sides and the back is a plate for each season, most recent first, with that season's winner. Your name goes on when you win it.

League shields

Win a league division below the top and you get its shield: a wooden shield on a small stand, with silver on it, the league and the division on the top plate and a plate for each season's winner below. The division just below the top has the bigger shield, the ones under it smaller. There are six designs, and a league keeps the same one. Winning the top division is the league's cup.

A simple career has a shield for each league you win, the pro leagues' bigger than the amateur ones', engraved with the seasons you won it. A simple career started before 6.7.2 has a shield for winning the amateur league and one for winning the pro league if you had, without the year.

The trophy cabinet

Each career has its cabinet, its shields on the shelves below the cups. A simple career has one too: TROPHY CABINET on the career's page. A stand-alone event's title is celebrated on the table, but only a career's titles go in its cabinet.

Your records

Everything you have done is kept: your best breaks, every game's figures, the shots you kept from replays, your career and the club tournaments you have entered. Records is the third tile down the side of the glass.

Stats

Overall stats

Games

Replays

Career

Tournaments

Saving and resuming

Every match is saved after every shot: against the computer, in a career and in an event. Close the game and carry on from the same shot.

A resumed match comes back on the ball set it was played with, because sets weigh differently. A new match is racked on your own choice.

Backing up

Settings → Backup keeps your settings, cues, ball sets, table styles, drills, careers, records and kept replays on the CueVR server, under your Meta account. BACK UP NOW makes one straight away, and CueVR also backs up by itself once a day. The last three are kept, listed by date and size.

To get one back, on any headset signed in to your account, choose RESTORE beside it (press it twice), then close CueVR and open it again: the backup is put in place as the game starts. If your kept replays would make a backup too big, they are left out of it, and it says so.

Instant replays

Every shot is recorded. Watch it again from anywhere round the table, and keep the ones worth keeping.

After a shot, press MENU and choose Replay. You see the shot again from a few seconds before it, cue and all. Online, your opponent's shots replay with their cue too.

What the shot was

The replay also shows the shot you played: how hard, how much spin, and where the tip hit the cue ball, and how far side pushed the ball off your line.

With a real cue, SHOW THE DELIVERY shows how straight your cue went through the ball, from the back of your backswing to the end of your follow-through, magnified so that 20 mm either side of the line fills the picture. TOP DOWN shows left and right, SIDE ON up and down. Practice swings before the shot are left out. SHOW THE STROKE goes back.

Your kept shots

Records → Replays on Home lists the shots you kept. PLAY watches one, DELETE throws it away. You can also get there from the Replay gallery chip on the pause menu. A kept shot plays back on the table it was played on, even after you change tables.

Real cue attachment

Fix a controller to a real cue and you play with the cue in your hands: your own bridge, your own stroke. First you show the game, once, where the controller sits on your cue. After that the cue on the table goes wherever your real one goes.

Once it is set up, the cue plays the ball when its tip reaches the ball, just like a real one. There is no button to press to strike.

Before you start

1. Fix the controller on tight. If it can wobble or twist on the cue, the drawn cue wobbles too. If you move it later, you will need to set the cue up again.
2. Find a clear spot of floor in front of you, with room to tilt the cue about a foot either way. A rug or a mat stops the tip sliding.

Open the set-up screen

Go to Settings → Controls and press CALIBRATE A CUE (it says CALIBRATE AGAIN once a cue is set up). The table disappears while you are on this screen, and you see your own room, so you can see your cue.

1. Say which controller is on your cue: press Left controller or Right controller, top right.
2. Press START.

From here on you do not need to look at the big screen, or press anything except the one trigger pull in step 1. The big screen goes away and a small card appears just above the controller on your cue, where you are already looking. It names the step, says what to do, and has a bar that fills as you go.

• Each step ends by itself. As it fills you hear soft ticks that rise in pitch. When it is done you hear a chime, the controller buzzes, and the card flashes green with DONE and the next step.
• Dots round your cue show the progress as well, so you can keep your eyes on the cue. They start grey and turn blue as they fill.
• To give up, press B (or X or Y). You go back to the set-up screen and the cue you had before is kept, unchanged.

Step 1 — cue upright, tip down

1. Stand the cue upright with its tip on the floor in front of you, held out so you can see the controller.
2. Turn the cue in your hands so that the side you normally have facing up when you play — the side with the badge, or where the points are — is facing towards you. When you lower the butt to play, that side ends up on top. This tells the game which way up your cue is, so the markings on the drawn cue match yours. If they come out turned, Cue rotation on the set-up screen puts them right.
3. Pull either trigger, the one under your first finger. The tip now stays on that spot for steps 2 and 3.

Step 2 — twist the cue

1. Keep the tip on its spot and the cue on the same line, and turn the cue in your fingers, about half a turn one way, then half a turn the other way, back and forth.
2. Keep going until the ring is full. It takes about four half turns, five seconds or so.

The dotted line shows where the game thinks the middle of your cue is. When it runs down the middle of your real cue to the tip, it has found it.

Step 3 — tilt it back and forth

1. Keep the tip on its spot and tilt the butt back and forth, whichever way is comfortable: away from you and back, or side to side. The arc starts out side to side and turns to follow the way you are tilting.
2. Go about 25 cm, ten inches, out at the butt each way, until both ends of the arc are full.

When it is done

1. The card says CALIBRATION COMPLETED and the set-up screen comes back.
2. Check it: turn your cue in your hand. The virtual cue should turn with the real one and stay on it all the way round. If it swings away from your cue as you turn it, press START AGAIN.
3. Press SAVE. Your cue is now switched on.

If it sends you back

The card turns orange and says why. It only does this when a step clearly did not work.

Saved calibrations

If you use more than one cue, or more than one clamp, you can keep a calibration for each and switch between them without setting up again.

• SAVE AS..., on the finished screen under SAVED CALIBRATIONS, keeps the calibration you have just made under a name, for example the name of the cue.
• LOAD beside a saved one puts it back in use. Press SAVE to keep it.
• DELETE removes it.

Fine-tuning it with the side trigger

A calibration is fixed to the controller and does not wear out. What does drift is the headset's tracking: over a session it can come to see the controller a few millimetres or a fraction of a degree from where it really is, and then the whole cue sits a little off. This puts that right, and you can do it whenever you like, even at the table in the middle of a frame. The side trigger is the grip button on the side of the controller, under your middle finger.

Switch it on first: Settings, Cue feel, SIDE TRIGGER NUDGE. It starts off, so that a squeeze on the side trigger never moves your cue unless you have asked for it. Switching it off again takes away any nudge you have made.

1. Lay your real cue on something flat, like a table or a desk, so it is still and you can see it clearly against the drawn cue.
2. Tap the side trigger on the cue's controller, then press it again and hold it. The drawn cue freezes in the air and stops following you. The tap has to come first: your hand rests on that button all through a game, and the tap tells the game you mean it.
3. Keep holding, and slide your real cue until it lies exactly under the drawn one: tip under tip, shaft under shaft.
4. Let go of the side trigger. The drawn cue now follows your real cue from where you put it.

• It moves the whole cue, not your calibration, so it cannot make the cue swing about when you turn it in your hand. Do it as often as you like: each one adds to the last.
• It lasts until you quit the game. Next time you start, you begin from your calibration as it was measured.
• To undo it, double tap the side trigger. The cue goes back to your calibration as measured. RESET NUDGE on the set-up screen does the same, and the line beside it says how far you have nudged.
• If nudging does not fix it, or you have moved the clamp, calibrate again. It takes about twenty seconds.

Small adjustments on the set-up screen

Open the set-up screen when your cue is already set up, and it opens on your calibration with two adjustments under it. Point at a − or + with your other hand and pull its trigger.

Every press saves straight away.

One stick has to do everything

A controller clamped to a cue is on the end of a metre and a half of timber. The game assumes you cannot reach it, so with a real cue set up, everything you need is on the hand that is free.

This only applies once a cue is calibrated and CUE is set to REAL CUE.

Your free hand has one stick, so the side trigger switches what the stick does. The panel always says which job it is on.

The buttons a clamped hand cannot reach

The rest of the settings

How your real cue feels (smoothing, how the drawn cue turns, deflection, the tip and stroke weight) is on Settings → Cue feel.

The Logitech MX Ink

The pen works as a cue. Its buttons do these jobs:

The double taps come from the pen itself, not from the game, so they feel the same as they do everywhere else on the pen.

Your other controller stays live — it still points at menus, still bridges, still presses things. If you would rather it stood down while the pen is in play, Settings → Controls → OFF HAND has that; the row only appears once the game has actually seen a pen.

Moving the table with a cue in your hands

You can move the table at any time, even mid-frame, to bring a shot to you. With a real cue, one of your sticks is on the cue. TABLE MOVEMENT on Settings → Controls has three ways to work. Two are below; the third, SNAP TO THE EDGES, is for playing over a real table (see Snap to the edges).

The table swings round once each time you push, not all the time, so it does not follow you round the room.

Marking your real table

This is the first step of the table panel, and the one worth doing properly. If the cloth is drawn over a real piece of furniture you can lean on it, rest a bridge hand on its edge and walk into it safely — and the game table stands on whatever you mark, so marking it well is how the cloth ends up at the right height and the right way round.

Stand at the edge of your desk, point along it and hold the trigger: the outline comes to your hand, at your hand's height, running the way you are pointing. Let go and it stays. From there the left stick slides it, the right stick sizes it, grip with the right stick turns and raises it, and you can grip any corner and drag it onto your real corner. RESET THE OUTLINE puts it back under the table if you lose it.

Or use both hands: hold both triggers and the line between them is the near edge, so the width comes from your reach along with the angle and the height. A hand on each corner of your desk sets the whole thing in one go.

The bright edge is the side you play from; amber means you are standing at a different one and should rotate the outline round to you. Show it while you play — Never, Always, or On press — from the same panel.

Snap to the edges

Once the mark is in, the TABLE MOVEMENT row has a setting built around it: SNAP TO THE EDGES. Stand at your real table's edge and the virtual table squares itself to the edge you marked — the outer wood of the frame lands exactly on your real edge, so when you rest your bridge hand on the rail it is resting on real timber.

• The slide stick slides the table along that edge, and nothing else. There is no forward or back, so the table can never drift off your real edge.
• The turn stick snap-turns: each push brings the next side of the table round to you, square on your real edge again. You can work all the way round the table without it ever leaving your furniture.
• Or point at the side you want. POINT AT THE EDGE, on the SNAP TURN row underneath, changes what the turn stick means: instead of stepping round one edge at a time, the stick becomes a picture of the table seen from where you stand. The edge under your hands is six o'clock, so pushing away brings the far side round in one press, and pushing left or right takes you to that side. On a hexagon or an octagon it still works, because the stick is read as an angle and rounded to whichever edge is nearest it.
• Hold the stick forward for a second and you step into the table, for the shots no edge can reach. Inside, you have full movement and 90° turns about the cue ball; the table goes back to your edge by itself after the shot, or when a new frame starts.

Table and room

You can change the table, the cloth, the woodwork, the balls, the lighting and what surrounds you. None of it changes how the game plays.

Both workshops keep what you build, and both can SHARE it as a six-letter code and take one in with ENTER A CODE. The ball workshop's START FROM lists your own sets after the built-in ones. Online, your opponent sees your cue as you built it.

Table designs

Seven bodies, on the BODY chips at the top of the timber card. Each one follows the shape of the bed, so an L-shaped or many-sided table gets the same design.

AUTO gives each table the body it would really have: the 7 ft pub table gets CABINET, the 9 ft American beds and straight pool get PRO, the 12 ft match table, 10-red snooker, English billiards and Paul get SNOOKER, and everything else — the Chinese 10 ft, pyramid, bar billiards, the rotation games and any many-sided or round bed — gets VICTORIAN.

A table dressed with string pockets is always built on one of the three snooker bodies — SNOOKER, ARCADE or MATCH — whichever else you pick. The bags and the collector rails hang in the shelf their overhang leaves, and on any other design they would be buried in the cabinet or left floating under it.

It works the other way too: SNOOKER is only offered on a table that has the bags. The overhang exists to leave them somewhere to hang, so on a table with drop pockets there is nothing to put in it and the body is a heavy cabinet wrapped round nothing. The TABLE row steps over it on those tables.

Rail furniture

Two more pieces of hardware sit on the rails, and both follow the table rather than your timber.

• Sights — the diamonds and dots along the rails that you aim a bank off. Every table carries the set its game uses.
• Corner castings — the cap that wraps each corner, in chrome or in black plastic. Snooker tables get the chrome; the American body's are the matte black ones already described above.

Workshop → Table can dress a table it built with the same furniture — see Build a table.

Balls

Twenty-seven sets. The BALLS panel opens a gallery: one rack, one table, one camera, so the only difference between two cards is the set.

BALLS

The set

Colours

Stripes

Numbers

Ring and pips

Pattern

Finish

Woodwork

The TIMBER panel sets the rails and the body together, in three choices made one after another: the finish, the colour, and — for a varnished finish — the wood. The wood does not choose the colour, so varnished oak can be navy. Every tile on the card is a picture of the rail in what that tile offers, so it looks like the timber you will get.

A fresh install starts on smooth varnished mahogany in TOURNAMENT. The body is drawn in the timber's colour; Settings → Graphics → BODY GRAIN draws the wood's grain on the body and legs as well, without the varnish, for a little more work on the headset.

The sixteen colours, each in smooth varnished mahogany:

The eleven woods, each in a colour that suits it:

Cloth

The cloth picker

MIX A CLOTH

Twenty-four colours. Here are twelve of them:

The rest: SILVERTAUPEGOLDNUTMEGRANGER GREENOLIVESAGEPOWDER BLUENAVYLIGHT PURPLEREDORANGE

Table styles

A table style is the whole look of your table kept under one name: the cloth (a colour you mixed included), the timber and its finish, the body, and the pocket leather or corner metal. STYLES, beside the title on the cloth and timber screens, opens them.

A style only changes how the table looks. The table you play on, its size and its pockets, stay as they are.

Lighting

AMBIENT, on the row under LIGHTING, sets how much of the light reaches a surface from the room rather than from the fixture above the table. Turning it up lifts the balls, the cloth and the woodwork out of the dark without moving the fixture, so the shadows stay where the rig put them; turning it down deepens them. It runs DIMMER, NORMAL, LIFTED, BRIGHT, BRIGHTER, BRIGHTEST, FLAT, and it starts at NORMAL, which is every rig exactly as it was built. Use it if your headset or your room makes the table darker than it looks here.

Surroundings

SMOKE and TAR, on Settings → Graphics, set how thick the smoke hangs in the pub and the snooker club, and how yellow it has turned the ceiling. Every pub and club among the venues is smoky to the same levels.

Music

Three of the rooms play music, and nothing plays until you start it. The music comes from where it is played, so it gets quieter as you walk away; its volume is MUSIC on Settings → Sound. There are seven piano pieces: Maple Leaf Rag, Clair de lune, Fantaisie-Impromptu, Canon in D, Arabesque No. 1, the Revolutionary Etude and the Impromptu in E flat.

• The jukebox in the pubs. Press 1 to 7 on its keypad for a song, or STOP. When a song ends the next one plays.
• The grand piano in the dining room. Press the keys with the tips of your controllers, and hold the index trigger for the sustain pedal. The brass plate beside the keys has back, play/stop and next, and when it plays a piece the keys move with it.
• The record player in the library. Pick a record from the crate, put it on the turntable and lower the arm onto it. Where you put the needle is where the piece starts.

You can lean over anything below your waist, such as the piano or a table, without the room moving away from you. Taller things still stop you.

In every room but your own and the dark hall, walls stop you, and Movement: Camera lets you walk round and look at it all. Steps take you up and down: the banks of seats in an arena or a theatre, the stairs down into a club's pit and its gallery, and the library's spiral staircase.

Your venue

Environment → Venue makes a room of your own to play in, from the same rooms the tour's events are played in. Choose what kind of room it is, and it is built for you. It stands round your table in any match, on your own or online — online it is only what you see; the other players keep their rooms.

The venue is dressed for the game you are playing: a club's other tables are the same game as yours, and the room changes with it if you rack a different game.

Playing in the host's room

Online, Host's room on the pause menu's ROOM row puts you in whatever room the host is playing in: one of the rooms, or their venue. If the host changes room, you change with them. It stays chosen for your next online games until you pick another room. If the host is in Your room (the headset's camera), you see your own.

The crowd

The venues have people in their seats, and you hear them. In your own rooms you hear the people who would be there — friends, diners or drinkers — if CROWD is set to ALL GAMES.

What you hear. The room talks quietly as you walk in and between frames, and settles as you get down to break. While you play it is quiet, and it answers what happens the moment it happens:

• applause for a pot, more for a long or thin one;
• applause for a 50 and a 100 in a snooker break, as the ball that makes it drops;
• a round for the frame ball, and more again for the match;
• an ooh when a ball rattles in the jaws, an aah at a near miss, and a groan at a foul.

You hear the crowd from where it sits, so the stand on your left is on your left. Every room claps differently.

Build a table

Workshop → Table on the main menu is a real table designer: the bed, the pockets, the jaws and the game. The table in front of you changes as you turn the knobs, and anything that would make it unplayable is refused with the reason.

Pages run down the side, as in the ball and cue workshops. The fittings page has BALL RETURN: a tray under each pocket, nets, or nets feeding a collector.

Working the rows

Named rows — START FROM, BED SHAPE, JAW STYLE, RULES and both SOFTNESS rows — step one press at a time however hard you push.

Table

Bed

Pockets

Jaws

Game

Fittings

THE BED

THE POCKETS

These rows set the hole: the circle a ball is caught by. They do not set the opening — that comes out of the finished table, and is shown to you at the bottom of the panel.

THE JAWS

THE GAME

Cloth colour, rail timber and the body design are not workshop settings — they come from APPEARANCE and are stamped onto whatever table you are playing on.

Bed shapes

Ten of them, on one row: RECTANGLEL-SHAPED (RIGHT)L-SHAPED (LEFT)TRIANGLESQUAREPENTAGONHEXAGONHEPTAGONOCTAGONROUND

• The shapes take rows away. A regular bed has no second dimension, so BED WIDTH goes and BED LENGTH is called SIZE. The L has no arm-size rows: its arms are even and its elbow square.
• The markings follow the shape. Baulk line, D, the six snooker spots, the foot spot and the rack run along a spine that turns the corner on an L. On a regular bed the corners are pockets, so everything is measured to a cushion rather than to a corner.
• A regular bed always breaks into a flat cushion, never into a pocket. On a three-, five- or seven-sided bed that can only be arranged at one end, and the pack end wins.
• A shape that cannot hold the game you have chosen grows until it can.
• Each shape remembers the rectangle's width, so flipping shape to look at something does not throw away a width you had dialled in.
• Polygon and round beds have no middle pockets — the MIDDLE opening reads NONE. The L keeps its middles.

What the workshop tells you

At the bottom of the panel is the OPENING, given for the corners and the middles separately, in ball widths. It is the one figure you cannot set directly: it follows from pocket size, depth, jaw angle and softness together, and it is worked out against the widest ball on the table, cue ball included.

• WONT FIT — the opening is less than one ball wide. It is a warning, not a refusal: the table still builds, still saves and still plays.
• NONE — no pockets of that kind, as on a polygon.
• TOO TIGHT TO BUILD — the cushions never reach the hole, so there is no opening to give.

An edit that would leave a table that cannot work is undone, and you are told why: "the corner pocket is narrower than the ball", "the bed is too narrow for the balls on it", "the reds do not fit behind the pink", "the rack does not fit on this bed".

Keeping it, and sending it

• KEEP THIS TABLE writes it to the library and shows you the name it will be given before you commit — L 84MM, HEX 76MM, ROUND 112MM, made from what the table is. It then appears on the main menu's TABLE row, for the games under USE FOR and no others. Come back to a kept table and the row reads SAVE THE CHANGES instead.
• FORGET IT deletes it. The row is only live on a table that came out of the library; one built from scratch has nothing to delete.
• Twelve slots. When they are full the keep row says NO ROOM; forget one to make space.
• BACK leaves without writing anything. Your edits are still there if you come back in the same session, but they are gone when you quit.
• It travels. If you play a friend on a table they have never seen, their headset fetches and installs it: they see FETCHING THEIR TABLE, then THEIR TABLE. If the two ends cannot agree on the table it says DIFFERENT TABLE and refuses the room. Cloth colour is left out of that comparison, so two players who chose different cloth can still meet.

Cues

Thirty cues, each made the way a real one is. Your choice is saved, and in an online match your opponent sees the cue in your hands exactly as you built it.

CLASSIC

TWIN FLAME

EDWARDIAN

MAYFAIR

KINGFISHER

REGENCY

ROYAL

PRISM

LAGOON

SUNSET

RIPTIDE

EMBER

CARDINAL

BLUE NOTE

OWL'S EYE

MOONSTONE

SAPPHIRE

CATHEDRAL

HAND MADE

CARBON

JUBILEE

ST GEORGE

VINTAGE

MIDNIGHT

BIRDIE

ASHPOOL

FOREST

COBALT

OBSIDIAN

ONE PIECE

Close up

The butt of every cue, from the splice to the end. Every one is built the same way: the points are spliced into the butt with their veneers, panels are let in round it, and a plate or insert sits in the flat at the end.

Building your own

Workshop → Cue has a rail of pages down the side and the cue in front of you, with the table and the chalk out of the way so you can walk round it and look closely. Every change shows on it straight away. It holds still: a page sets which face is towards you, and pressing either thumbstick turns it an eighth of a turn.

Cue

Shaft

Splice

Veneers

Butt

Panel

Panel wood

Insert

Plate

Extras

End cap

Decoration

A flag on the end

On the End cap page, ON THE END → COUNTRY lets any of the game's flags into the end of the cap. The flag shows beside PICK; press it for the others, shown as the flags themselves, with each country's name on the help line as you point. TURN sets which way up it sits and SIZE how big: at 100% it fills the end from top to bottom and the circle trims its sides, smaller shows the whole flag with the cap round it. Where the butt is planed flat for the plate, the flag is cut straight along the flat. Some of the tour players' cues carry their country's flag there.

Colours

Point at any colour swatch to open the picker. Choose any colour from the square, or one of the named woods and colours beside it: EBONY, ROSEWOOD, MAPLE, BRASS and so on.

Saving, sharing and deleting

• SAVE writes over the cue of yours you are editing. Started from a rack cue, it says SAVE AS MY CUE and makes it yours; after that it writes over it.
• START FROM one of your own cues and that is the cue you are editing: SAVE writes to it, not to the one you opened the workshop on.
• SAVE A COPY keeps a second cue, and you go on editing the copy. The copy gets a number on its name (HAND MADE 2), so no two of your cues share a name.
• DONE saves if anything changed and closes. Look at a rack cue without changing it and you are simply holding that cue.
• DELETE throws one of your cues away. Press it twice.
• SHARE gives you a six-letter code, such as 47Z-BPX. Anyone who types it into ENTER A CODE gets a copy of your cue alongside theirs. Sharing the same design twice gives the same code.
• Twenty-four cues of your own. When there is no room, delete one.

Your cue case

A case of cues, each with its feel, and the right one in your hands for each game. Turn it on with CUE CASE in Settings → Cue feel; it is off until you do. Fill it on the workshop's Cue case page, which Home's cue button opens while the case is on.

Where the case is kept:

• The library, the dining room, the snooker and pool halls and the pub: a rack on the wall.
• The arenas: the cue stand by your chair.
• Your own room, the dark room and the classic arena: a drawer in the table, at the baulk end, under the ball return. Grip its handle and pull to slide it out. The cues lie in it butt first. The handle is in the same metal as the table's corners, or brass on a table with nets.
• Down the club: your cues stand in the rack at your own table.

Changing cue: reach for a cue and grip to take it. You can take one at any time, even during the other player's turn or while the balls are rolling. The break and jump cues are for one shot: once that shot is played and the balls have stopped, the cue you had before is back in your hand. Any other cue stays in your hand until you change again or the game ends. The break cue only comes out in games that break a pack, never in snooker or carom.

Sharing and the gallery

Four things you make can be given to anyone as a six-letter code, and put in a gallery for everybody to find.

A code looks like 47Z-BPX. Sharing the same thing twice gives the same code. What you take in is a copy: it joins your own, and nothing you change on it reaches the player who made it.

The gallery

GALLERY, beside the title in the Workshop, opens it. The same button is on the cue, ball set, challenge, cloth and timber pickers, and opens on the tab for what you were choosing.

CUES

The gallery's ball sets

The gallery's challenges

The gallery's table styles

• Pick one to see its name and the date it went in.
• ADD TO MINE keeps it, exactly as typing its code would, and takes you to it.
• LIKE puts your heart on it; press again to take it back. Each headset has one heart for each entry.
• NEWEST and MOST LIKED choose the order.
• The arrows at either side turn the page. A page appears straight away and its pictures fill in as they arrive.

Putting yours in

Nothing goes in the gallery unless you put it there. SHARE gives you a code and nothing more; the code is yours to give to whoever you like. Once it has been shared, the same button says PUT IN GALLERY. Press it and your cue, set, challenge or style appears in the gallery under its name, with its picture.

Chalk

There is a block of chalk on the rail. You can pick it up and chalk your tip, or leave it to the game: unless you change it, your tip is always chalked.

Settings → Chalk

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

1. CHALK BLOCK — A cube or a cylinder. The cube marks the cloth like pressed chalk; the cylinder hardly marks it.
2. CHALK COLOUR — Green, grey or blue. The marks on the cloth come out in this colour.
3. CHALKING — AUTOMATIC: your tip is always chalked and never slips. MANUAL: the tip wears with every shot, more on hard ones, and an off-centre hit on a bare tip miscues.
4. CHALK ON THE TABLE — Hide the block when chalking is AUTOMATIC. With MANUAL it is always there.
5. CHALK SOUND — The sound and buzz of chalking your tip.
6. KEEP IT IN REACH — The block follows you round the table to the rail beside you.
7. MARKS ON THE WHITE — Chalk smudges on the cue ball where you hit it. Turning it off cleans the ball.
8. CUSTOM CHALK POSITION — Lets you change how the block sits in your hand (below).
9. RESET CHALK POSITION — Back to the normal hold.

Chalking your tip

1. Free your bridge hand: hold the side trigger and slide that hand up and off the end of the cue. The cue stays in your other hand. (With a real cue, your free hand is already free.)
2. Pick up the block: pull the trigger with your hand near it.
3. Rub it on your tip for a moment.
4. Take the cue again: squeeze the side trigger with your hand back on the shaft.

To change how you hold the block, squeeze the side trigger while holding it. The block stays still while your hand moves, so you can turn it the way you like, then let go. It stays held that way. Two quick squeezes put it back.

Miscues

With chalking on MANUAL, a bare tip can slide off the ball instead of gripping it. The ball goes off line, by up to thirty degrees, with almost no spin. Slip under it and it hops; slip over the top and it hardly moves. It is not random: the same hit always gives the same miscue. A tip that has only just run out of chalk throws the ball a little; a bare one, a lot.

Marks on the cloth

Chalk lands on the cloth when you play, as it does on a real table: a speck from a gentle shot, a cloud from a break. To clean it, lay your free hand on the cloth with the trigger held and sweep. Do the same over the cue ball to clean it. A new table always starts clean.

Online you see your opponent's block, its colour and the chalk on their tip. Turning CHALK MARKS off hides everyone's marks.

Pockets

The pocket you can see cut into the cloth is exactly the pocket that catches the ball. Every table's pockets are built to that table's published specification, and a snooker corner and an American one are nothing like each other.

The opening, in ball widths

The number that matters is the opening: the narrowest passage across the pocket, which is what a ball has to fit through. Millimetres alone will not tell you much, because the balls are different sizes too, so it is quoted in ball widths. A pocket 1.6 balls across leaves you half a ball of margin either side of a straight pot; one at 1.07 leaves you two and a half millimetres.

The jaws

An English pocket's facings are a four-point curve. It leaves the straight cushion nose 70 mm out from the pocket and arrives where the hole in the timber meets the frame's inner face, on a tangent set by the pocket's centre line. A corner arrives at 45°, a middle at 10° off square. Where the curve meets the straight rail it is blended rather than cornered.

An American pocket is not curved at all: the facings are a straight mitre, cut at an angle to the rail. A Russian pyramid pocket is mitred as well, and so are the hexagon, octagon, round and L-shaped beds whenever the table asks for a mitre.

The knuckle on a mitred pocket

Where the two straight faces meet they do not meet in a point. Each one stops short and runs tangent into a small circle — 4 mm on the American tables, 5 mm at the corners and 11 mm at the middles of the Russian pyramid tables, or whatever KNUCKLE RADIUS is set to on a table you build — and the arc between the two tangent points is the knuckle. The circle is the whole of the tip, so a ball rebounds from the arc you can see, at the place you can see it.

You can hear how hard you caught it. A jaw tip has its sound and it is scaled by the pace of the contact, a shade under a rail struck at the same speed — brushing one on the way past is a tick, rattling one at speed is a crack.

The rim

The rim is the flat, rounded cloth around the hole before the timber begins, and it is most of what gives a snooker pocket its look. On the snooker and English billiards tables it reaches 61.4 mm out from the centre at a corner and 67.4 mm at a middle; on the Chinese table 59.8 and 61.9 mm. The ball never has to fit through it: the opening is cushion and the rim is cloth, so a bigger rim does not make a pocket easier.

What that means when you play

• The jaws take the pace off a firm pot instead of spitting it out, but a ball hit hard into a rounded snooker or Chinese pocket can still rattle between them and stay out. Speed is not free.
• The cloth cut meets the drop exactly, on every table and at every pocket size, so a ball is never over bare slate before it is caught, and never caught while it is still on cloth.
• The Chinese table is the tightest of the pool games at 1.50 balls, and the Russian tables are tighter than anything else here by a long way.

String pockets, and where a potted ball goes

A snooker table does not swallow a ball. It catches it in a bag and hands it back to you, and the whole run is built: a leather plate round the back of the pocket, a knotted string bag hanging from the plate, a brass ring at the bottom of the bag, and under the ring a wire collector running along the side of the table. The collector slopes.

• It is the ball you potted, carrying the pace and the direction you potted it with, and it starts falling the moment it leaves the bed rather than waiting for the shot to finish.
• The balls hit each other on the way in, and the row shifts along when a new one arrives. Every contact makes its noise.
• A full collector passes the ball on to an emptier one.
• Respot a colour and it is lifted back out of the collector.
• Replays show the pockets too, so you can watch a pot go down the bag again.

3-red, 6-red, 10-red and Chinese 8-ball are all built the same way. The other tables have a lined drop instead, which is why they sound the same whatever hits them.

If you want to see what a different pocket plays like, you can build one — see the next section.

Physics

Nothing in CueVR is scripted. Every pot, safety, swerve and rattle comes out of a simulation of real balls on real cloth, so the things you know from a real table work here, and the things you have to allow for on a real table you have to allow for here too.

Where you hit the cue ball

There is no spin control. What the cue ball does after it hits another ball is decided by two things only: where on the ball your tip lands, and how hard you hit it. (Players call these topspin "follow", backspin "screw" or "draw", and sidespin "side" or "english".)

• Middle of the ball. The ball slides at first, picks up forward roll from the cloth as it travels, and carries on forward after it hits something.
• Above the middle — topspin. The ball is already rolling forward when it arrives, so it keeps going through the ball it hits.
• Below the middle — backspin. The ball arrives spinning backwards and comes back towards you after the contact. The cloth rubs backspin off as the ball travels, so it needs pace and it will not survive the length of the table: over a long distance the ball goes into normal forward roll before it ever arrives.
• Middle, hit firmly — the stop shot. If the ball is still sliding rather than rolling when it arrives, it stops dead on a full contact instead of following through.
• Left or right of the middle — sidespin. The ball spins like a top as it travels. This barely changes where the ball you hit goes, but it changes what your ball does off a cushion, and it lasts a couple of seconds before the cloth wears it off.

There is a limit to how far off centre you can hit, and the game applies it: past about 0.55 of the ball's radius a real tip slips off the ball — the miscue limit — so that is as much spin as anybody can put on. Aiming further out simply gives you the maximum rather than something impossible.

Sidespin pushes your ball off the line you aimed

Hit away from the middle of the ball and it does not set off down the line of the cue. It is pushed the opposite way to the sidespin you put on — right-hand sidespin sends it slightly left — and the harder you hit, the more it goes. This happens with a real cue too, and you have to aim off to allow for it. If you keep missing to one side when using sidespin, this is why.

Sidespin plus a raised cue makes the ball curve

Lift the back of the cue and some of the hit goes downwards into the cloth instead of along the table. With sidespin on, the ball sets off on one line and then bends away from it while the spin grips the cloth. A small lift gives a gentle curve you can use to get round a ball in the way; a big lift gives an obvious hook.

Cue angle

You cannot always hold the cue flat. When your ball is tight against a cushion the back of the cue has to come up to clear it, and the game does that for you rather than letting the cue pass through the cushion. A raised cue puts some of the hit downwards into the cloth, so expect less length and more curve than the same shot played flat.

Jump shots

Raise the cue far enough and the cue ball leaves the bed. It comes down, bounces two or three times — cloth over slate gives very little back — and settles into a normal roll. Snooker has its rules about when a jump is allowed and when it is a foul, and the referee applies them.

Throw: the ball you hit does not go quite where you aimed

When two balls meet they grip each other for the instant they are touching, and that grip pushes the ball you hit slightly off the line. Two things cause it:

• The angle. On anything other than a dead-straight contact the two balls rub across each other as they part, which drags the ball you hit a little fuller than the pure angle suggests.
• Sidespin. A spinning cue ball rubs sideways against the ball it touches and pushes it that way — the same reason a spinning football bends. So a shot played with sidespin can miss even when the line was right, and the more sidespin you use the more you have to allow.

Both are small. On a short pot you will not notice; on a long one it is the difference between the middle of the pocket and the jaw.

Cushions

A cushion is rubber, not a wall, and it does three things you can use:

• It takes more off a hard shot than a soft one. Restitution falls as the ball arrives faster, so a firm ball comes off proportionally slower than a gentle one. You cannot judge a two-cushion position from a one-cushion one just by hitting it harder.
• Each table's rubber is different. An American pool cushion is the liveliest, a UK championship cushion the deadest, with snooker and Chinese 8-ball between them.
• Sidespin changes the angle. The cushion has friction along it, so sidespin that is turning the same way the ball is travelling opens the angle out, and sidespin against it tightens the angle.

The cushion nose sits above the middle of the ball, as it does on a real table, so a ball is pressed down into the cloth as it goes in and lifted slightly as it comes out.

The American and Russian pyramid tables have K55 cushions, the profile those tables use: a lower, pointed nose, with the top of the cushion sloping down to it at 7 degrees.

The cue meets the table as it is drawn. The cushions, their slope, the wooden rail and the rail round the back of every pocket are solid to the cue at exactly the height you see them; the pocket holes are open down to their floor.

How much spin a tip off the middle gives. A rigid ball struck off centre takes spin in proportion to the offset, 2.5 times it as a ratio of spin to speed, and CueVR takes a share of that ideal for each kind of spin. Screw and top get 0.65 of it from a level cue, where the full figure made the draw shot come back further than players expected, rising to the whole of it as the butt comes up: from 15 degrees, reaching it at 45, so a steep massé or jump stroke gets all its screw. Side, and the swerve and massé a raised cue gives, keep the whole of it: turning those down with the screw made the big swerves and massé shots impossible, and on a real table they are not weaker than the rigid ideal says.

The cushions grip the ball with 1.25 times the friction they had before 6.5, so side and spin take a little more off a rail.

Jump shots. Raise the butt and strike down firmly and the ball leaves the bed. A ball struck near its middle jumps best; a massé with heavy side or screw jumps less, because more of the cue's push goes into spin, so it stays on the cloth and starts curving sooner.

Pockets

The pocket you see cut into the cloth is exactly the pocket that catches the ball. The jaws take the pace off a firm pot instead of spitting it out, but a ball hit hard into a rounded snooker or Chinese pocket can rattle between the jaws and stay out. Speed is not free. Every table's pocket is built to its published specification, and they are very different from each other — see Pockets.

The drop is gravity. A ball that has cleared the jaws rolls over the cloth, turns over the pocket edge and falls off it. The lip is a real surface with the ball's weight acting along it, so the further round the edge the ball goes the faster it goes, as anything on a slope does. Whether a ball goes down at all is decided by the jaws and the cloth cut, not by how long it takes to disappear.

Bar billiards is the exception, because its nine holes are bored through the bed rather than cut into a rail. A ball goes down one by free fall across the hole, so it has to be rolled in: gently and it drops, hard and the far lip is still under its equator when it gets there and it skips across and carries on up the table.