Life pool (also known as 3 lives Snooker) was a form of

pocket billiards Pool is a classification of cue sports played on a table with six pockets along the , into which balls are deposited. "Pool billiards" is sometimes hyphenated and/or spelled with a singular "billiard". The WPA itself uses "pool-billiard" in ...

(pool) mainly played in the 19th century. Its rules were first recorded in 1819 simply as pool which remained its most common name among the British for about a century. In the United States, it was also simply called "pool" in the mid-19th century. It was one of several pool games that were popular at this time (so called because gamblers pooled their bets at the start of play). The object of the game was to be the last player left "alive" and therefore scoop the pool (take the winnings). Each player had three "lives" to begin with and would lose one when another player potted their which was designated to them at the start of the game. Using the same number of balls as players, players take turns striking their designated ball with the cue in an attempt to collide that ball with one (or more) of their opponents' balls knocking the opponent ball into a pocket. Once a player lost their three lives, they were declared "dead", i.e. out of the game. The game continued in this way until there was only one player left, who was declared the winner. Around 1862, life pool spawned

black pool Black pool, originally known as everlasting pool, was a form of pocket billiards (pool) mainly played in the late 19th century, first being recorded in 1862. This game was derived from life pool but lacked the pooling of bets and players had unlim ...

, an ancestor of

snooker Snooker (pronounced , ) is a cue sport played on a rectangular table covered with a green cloth called baize, with six pockets, one at each corner and one in the middle of each long side. First played by British Army officers stationed in Ind ...

, today one of the most popular

cue sports Cue sports are a wide variety of games of skill played with a cue, which is used to strike billiard balls and thereby cause them to move around a cloth-covered table bounded by elastic bumpers known as . There are three major subdivisions ...

in the world.

References

* Pool (cue sports) History of snooker {{notstub