The table: size, diamonds and spots

Everything in three-cushion is measured against the table. Learn its geometry and the diamonds become a ruler you aim with.

Size

The match table's playing surface, measured between the noses of the cushions, is 2.84 m long and 1.42 m wide: exactly two squares side by side. Smaller tables exist (2.30 m and 2.10 m are common in clubs), but every international event, and the Carombo trainer, uses the full size.

The bed is slate, usually heated a few degrees above the room so the cloth stays dry and fast. The cloth is fine worsted wool, most often blue, sometimes green.

The diamonds

The diamonds are inlaid marks on the top of the rails. There are seven along each long rail and three along each short rail, dividing the long side into eight equal parts and the short side into four. Because the table is twice as long as it is wide, the spaces are the same on all four rails: 35.5 cm each.

Players count diamonds for everything: where a ball sits, where it will strike a cushion, where it comes off. Diamond systems turn those counts into aiming numbers. The key thing to know is that the diamonds sit on the rail, outside the cushion, so a line "through a diamond" is a line drawn to the diamond itself, not to the cushion's edge.

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The spots

Three spots on the long axis of the table are used for the break:

Two smaller marks sit on the head string either side of the head spot, about 18 cm away: the breaker's cue ball goes on one of them. See Rules.

Cushions

Carom cushions are lively. A ball driven into them keeps most of its speed, and with spin it can come off at a very different angle than it went in. Three things change the rebound:

In the trainer: the table is drawn to scale, with the diamonds and spots in their regulation places. The numbered markers show each cushion the cue ball touches, so you can count to three as it goes.

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