Goriziana or nine-pin billiards (also known as nine-pins, 9-pins, etc.) is a
carom billiards
Carom billiards, sometimes called carambole billiards, is the overarching title of a family of cue sports generally played on cloth-covered, billiard tables. In its simplest form, the object of the game is to score or "counts" by ' one's o ...
game, especially popular in
Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...
cue sport
Cue sports are a wide variety of games of skill played with a cue, which is used to strike billiard balls and thereby cause them to move around a cloth-covered table bounded by elastic bumpers known as .
There are three major subdivisions of ...
most closely related to it,
five-pin billiards
Five-pin billiards or simply five-pins or 5-pins (Italian: ';
In case of a foul, two points are deducted, and any points the shooter would have earned on the foul shot are nullified. Examples of fouls:
*Failure to strike the shooter's own cue ball correctly;
*Failure to strike the opponent's cue ball with the shooter's own;
*Knocking over pins with the shooter's own cue ball before hitting the opponent's cue ball;
*Hitting the red ball before hitting the opponent's cue ball.
Variants
Goriziana is primarily popular in Italy, and amateur players there have developed many variants of the game. Some of these variants are played in tournaments.
Goriziana ×2
This variant, also called ''tutti doppi'' ("all-doubled"), is officially recognized by the
Italian Federation of Billiard Sports
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
(FIBiS). The point values in the normal game are doubled in this version:
*Four points for every external pin knocked over;
*Sixteen points for every internal pin knocked over;
*Twenty points for knocking over the red central pin together with one or more white pins;
*Sixty points for knocking over the red central pin only;
*Twelve points if the cue ball strikes the opponent's ball correctly and causes the opponent's ball to strike the red ball;
*Twelve points if the cue ball strikes the opponent's ball correctly and then strikes the red ball;
*Four points are taken away if the shooter's ball fails to strike the opponent's cue ball.
Filotto
This variant is the same as goriziana ×2, except that the score for striking the red pin alone is eighty points instead of sixty, and eighty points are also awarded if five pins in a vertical or horizontal row are struck.