Definition of Jaws

This is a style of play where the player is required to stay on top of all the scoring practices. Scratches and points will disappear if they are not remembered.

This is a bank in one pocket pool that is sitting at an angle that makes it unsafe to play.

Also piquet. Either a massé shot with no english, or a shot in which the cue stick is steeply angled, but not held quite as vertical as it is in full massé.

This is the act of keeping your ball location advantages the way they are, and not allowing your opponent to even things out in the game of one pocket.

Same as gapper

This is a particular ball which lends itself to be used as a "blocker" or a "protector."
To use a particular ball as security by playing a safety or leaving it where it will act as one.

In snooker and British pool, the successful potting of all object balls-on in a single frame.

Same as cue.

The World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association, founded in 1968 and based in Bristol, England, United Kingdom is the governing body of professional snooker and English billiards. It sets the sports' rules, organises tournaments and the pro-am and pro tours, and engages in various promotional activities.

The ball required to guarantee victory in a match. Sometimes used figuratively to mean the last difficult ball required (chiefly British and usually used in multi-frame matches, particularly snooker).

A tournament format in which a player must lose two matches in order to be eliminated.

The triangular device, generally plastic, used to group the balls in a pyramid form prior to the beginning of a game.

This is a version of double elimination tournament play that splits the field of competitors into two brackets that come together for a single elimination championship game.

In certain carom billiards games, any shot in which the cue ball is sucessfully caromed off an object ball to strike another object ball (with or without contacting cushions in the interim) is a considered a billiards shot.

To fail to make a legal shot.

To play a shot with the stroke and speed that makes it easiest to pocket the object ball, even at the expense of sacrificing position.

This is a long distance shot that is given to your opponent as a challenge to make because it often works well as a safety (defense) when a better one is not available.

Common slang in the US for a cheap, poorly made cue. Compare wood.

This is a ball that is left in a position that allows an easy shot, while time is spent working with other balls to better your position in the game.

This is to watch a match with such intensity that there is worry, usually because of a wager on the game.

A pool table where two shims have been placed on the sides of each pocket (in the jaws beneath the cloth), making the pockets "tighter" (smaller). Such tables are "tougher" than unshimmed or single-shimmed tables.

Principally British: In snooker, if a player wins a match without the need for the final session to be played (for example, if a player wins a best-of-25-frames match split into three sessions - two sessions of eight frames and one of nine - by a margin of say, 13 frames to 3), then they are said to have won the match "with a session to spare".

In snooker, the cushion opposite the top cushion and bounded by the yellow and green pockets (i.e. same as bottom cushion).

The inside walls of a pocket billiards table's pockets.