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Artistic pool is a trick shot competition played on pocket billiards table. The sport has its inspirations from artistic billiards. Artistic pool originated in the United States in 1993. The sport was only played at an amateur level until 2000 after which professional level competitions began to be conducted. Artistic pool requires high levels of skill and extreme practice.

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In artistic pool, players compete to perform 56 preset shots, each with a varying level of difficulty. Some of the shots are jump shots, curve shots, and shots that require props like pins, for which players employ different techniques.  Shot are assigned a maximum point value for perfect execution, which begins from four points for lowest level difficulty shots and goes up to 11 points for highest difficulty shots.

Each shot should be played from a fixed position, and shots are expected to follow a certain pattern. Players get a maximum of three attempts for each preset shot. A total of 500 points can be scored if all the shots are perfectly executed. And the player with the most points scored is the winner.

In competitions, games are played in a head-to-head where the loser is eliminated until the final match where a winner is decided.

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Similar Sports

• Artistic Billiards — a carom billiards discipline in which players score points for performing 76 preset shots of varying difficulty. It is sometimes called fantasy billiards.
• Pocket Billiards — also known as Pool, it is the name for a range of cue sports played on a table with six pockets along the rails, into which the main aim is to hit balls into the pockets.
• See Cue Sports (Billiards)

Related Pages

• Complete list of sports
• The Encyclopedia of Sports