Both professional players and amateurs say that Russian billiards is a fiendishly difficult game, requiring both the skills of a craftsman and the patience of a saint. Billiards appeared in Russia almost 300 years ago, when Tsar Peter the Great imported it from Europe.
From the outset, the Russians turned it into a whole new ball game. Russian billiards, or as it is often called, the Russian Pyramid, is played with 15 white and one red cue ball. The first player to pocket any eight balls wins.
It may look easy enough, but the table and the balls are bigger than in Western pool, while the pockets are only several millimeters larger than the balls. This makes the game especially challenging, requiring outstanding precision.
The word billiard is either derived from the French word billiard, one of the wooden sticks used to strike the balls, or bile, one of the billiard balls. The game of billiards evolved from a lawn game very similar to the game of croquet that was probably in France. The game was moved indoors to a wooden table with a green cloth that was supposed to represent grass. The billiard table also had a simple border placed around it’s borders. In the first plays of billiards, instead of being struck, the balls were shoved by wooden sticks called maces.
The cue was developed in the late 1600’s. When the ball lay near the rail, the mace was a very hard thing to use because of it’s big head. Whenever this happened the billiard players would turn the mace around, and hit the balls with the tail end of the mace. The tail was "queue", which is were we get the cue. For a long time, only men were allowed to use the cue. Women were forced to use the mace because it was thought that women would rip the cloth with the sharper cue stick.
Billiard tables originally had flat vertical walls for rails, and their only function was to keep the balls from falling off the table. The rails resembled river banks, and were even used to be called banks. When players found out that the balls would bounce off the rails, the y began to deliberately aiming at the banks. That was the invention of the "bank shot". The "bank shot" is were a ball is aimed, and shot at the wall as part of a shot.
There is an opinion, that Asia was a motherland of billiard, and that it was imported to England by Chinese. The game used to develop, new types appeared, billiard accessories improved, rules changed and the popularity of the game spread over the world. In Russia billiard was imported by Peter the Great from Holland. In the beginning of XX century the book “Theory of billiard game” by Leman was issuied. It contained both theory and practical course. Few years after another book by Konovalov “School and rules of billiard game, based on the methods of famous Russian billiardist Dokuchaev S.F.” was issued.
The most masterly and famous billiardists of that time were: Beresin, Gaev, Yefimov, Kobezev, Kochetkov, Milyaev, Chetverikov, Galakhin, Pavlich. First of the most competitive and bright tournaments was held in 1953, Russian Pyramid Tournament.
Today everybody has a possibility and choice of playing billiard in various billiard clubs. Our Billiard club “Russkiy Stil” presents 12 Russian Pyramid tables, 3 pool tables, 2 isolated comfortable VIP halls. Our hospitable and attentive staff will provide you the most comfortable and relaxing atmosphere ever. And our “homemade” Odessa food will not leave you indifferent.