Greetings from Finland!

[Centreman]

Good evening everyone.

My name is Ville Salo, I'm a billiards fanatic currently living in Kotka, Finland.

I'm an full time IT student, and a part time gambling hall-thingy supervisor. Well, now during the summer a full time of the latter, not at all the first.

I propably am a silly figure around the table. A fat mess with hideous big 9 euro glasses from SpecSavers on my head and a glove on my (right) hand, and I'm not a very good player either. My highest break so far is 32, the only time I've passed the 30 mark.

I have actually always liked billiards, when I was little I had a kiddy pool table. But I've been playing billiards actively for about a year and a half, and I got my bug during my military service, when I was the conscript commitee secretary in my brigade, and the room next to our little office was a "club room", which actually had a pool table. So to pass the time, which we actually had a lot to pass, I started to play pool. And been on that road ever since. After the army I joined my local billiards club in my home town... Or village... Not sure what to call it actually... The club is Inkeroisten Biljardikerho -81, Billiards Club of Inkeroinen. Inkeroinen is a small town/village within the city of Kouvola (formerly the city of Anjalankoski, but there were some mergers). This is a small private club with two snooker tables and a kaisa table. This is the time when my main game permanently switched to snooker. Then a bit time passed, and I moved out of my home to the city of Kotka, about 20 miles away of Inkeroinen, so my local club now is actually Billiard Cave in Kotka, but I still try to go to Inkeroinen as much as possible, since that is my true spiritual home, and the fact that billiard cave has only one snooker table in a pretty awful condition and most patrons there mostly just play pool or pool and kaisa. Very few snookerists there. I like to call them poolf*gs.

Nevertheless, snooker is my main game, but I also play pool, kaisa, russian billiards, english billiards, heck, I play anything where you move a ball on a table with a stick to do something.

And last a warning. I have a habit of typing whatever comes to my mind and when I do this in english, they have a high tendency to come up rather rude. I've already been thought to have a go at Jimmy White and to criticise Martin Gould for not using glasses properly on this very forum. Neither of which was the case. But hey can't please everybody, so please be welcome to challenge me to a game of ANYTHING.

[FerruleFox]

I'd say welcome! but you've been here longer than I have.

[stan-mullin]

Good evening everyone.

My name is Ville Salo, I'm a billiards fanatic currently living in Kotka, Finland.

I'm an full time IT student, and a part time gambling hall-thingy supervisor. Well, now during the summer a full time of the latter, not at all the first.

I propably am a silly figure around the table. A fat mess with hideous big 9 euro glasses from SpecSavers on my head and a glove on my (right) hand, and I'm not a very good player either. My highest break so far is 32, the only time I've passed the 30 mark.

I have actually always liked billiards, when I was little I had a kiddy pool table. But I've been playing billiards actively for about a year and a half, and I got my bug during my military service, when I was the conscript commitee secretary in my brigade, and the room next to our little office was a "club room", which actually had a pool table. So to pass the time, which we actually had a lot to pass, I started to play pool. And been on that road ever since. After the army I joined my local billiards club in my home town... Or village... Not sure what to call it actually... The club is Inkeroisten Biljardikerho -81, Billiards Club of Inkeroinen. Inkeroinen is a small town/village within the city of Kouvola (formerly the city of Anjalankoski, but there were some mergers). This is a small private club with two snooker tables and a kaisa table. This is the time when my main game permanently switched to snooker. Then a bit time passed, and I moved out of my home to the city of Kotka, about 20 miles away of Inkeroinen, so my local club now is actually Billiard Cave in Kotka, but I still try to go to Inkeroinen as much as possible, since that is my true spiritual home, and the fact that billiard cave has only one snooker table in a pretty awful condition and most patrons there mostly just play pool or pool and kaisa. Very few snookerists there. I like to call them poolf*gs.

Nevertheless, snooker is my main game, but I also play pool, kaisa, russian billiards, english billiards, heck, I play anything where you move a ball on a table with a stick to do something.

And last a warning. I have a habit of typing whatever comes to my mind and when I do this in english, they have a high tendency to come up rather rude. I've already been thought to have a go at Jimmy White and to criticise Martin Gould for not using glasses properly on this very forum. Neither of which was the case. But hey can't please everybody, so please be welcome to challenge me to a game of ANYTHING.

Welcome my friend!!!!!!!!!!

Please tell me about Russian billiards, its one game I would love to play!

:snooker:

[Centreman]

I'd say welcome! but you've been here longer than I have.

Yeah apparently true when you look at the joining date... But the thing is that originally I joined to read a thread about Acuerate cues, one of which I was planning to get. And even with all the bad things said about those cues I still went and tested it, liked it, got it and now play with it and it's the only cue I've been happy with so far.

Welcome my friend!!!!!!!!!!

Please tell me about Russian billiards, its one game I would love to play!

:snooker:

Hmm... What is there to say really... It's played on a 12ft table (though I've only played it with a 10ft russian billiards table used for the finnish game of Kaisa) with 68mm balls. The pockets are REALLY tight, corner pockets are about 4mm and centre pockets about 15mm wider than the balls. So you have to be pretty damn precise. A frame is won when either player makes the 8th point. A point is made by pocketing a ball or going in-off. And for a shot to be legal any ball must either touch two cushions (or balls on the cushion) or touch a cushion and pass the middle line of the table after contact. Initial setup is that the 15 white balls (the cue ball is usually either yellow or dark brown) are racked like the reds on a snooker table and the opening shot is taken from behind the baulk line. The typical opening shot is to shoot your cue ball in-off of the pyramid of white balls and to open them up a bit. If you foul, your last potted ball will be spotted, and if you haven't potted anything so far, you will spot the first ball you pot.

Those are the core rules, then there are the three different variants:

Dynamic/Petersburgh, Combined/Moscow and Free/Amerikanka.

In dynamic you use the cue ball to do your shots, and when you go in-off, you take a ball of your liking from the table as your point, and start from a free hand ball like in 9 ball you would. When you're shooting from your hand you always have to go for an object ball, you can't go in-off from a hand shot, or it's a foul.

In combined the difference to dynamic is that after going in off you have to make your shot below the baulk line, and you can only pocket to the middle and far corner pockets, but in this game you can go in-off from your hand ball.

In free after the initial break shot, you can use any ball on the table as a cue ball. This is the "easiest" of russian billiards games.

That's the game in a nutshell. Quite simple but has knacks of it's own. I'll propably translate the finnish Kaisa games rules someday and post them here, you'll propably find that a bit more interesting since I think that is actually propably playable on a snooker table (albeit not the real McCoy) and it has a bit more of an unicue twist to it than going in off.