Is billiards a sport or a hobby?

What is your favorite sport? If you answer "billiards", it may be that more than one will look at you wrong. Billiards? "Come on, if that's just a game to have a laugh with colleagues on Friday night." And then the eternal debate begins: what is billiards, a sport or just a hobby? In this week's article we give you some arguments to convince that kind of person who laughed when you answered "billiards".



1- Physical activity, exercised as a game or competition, the practice of which involves training and adherence to rules.
2- Recreation, hobby, pleasure, fun or physical exercise, usually outdoors.

Billiards fits in both meanings quite well: it is a game or competition that involves training and is subject to rules, and it is also a hobby, fun, a pleasure. It is also a social game that can be enjoyed with friends, in a pool club, in a bar, or even in a live casino.

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In fact, “sport” comes from “deportare”, which also means “to be distracted”, “to entertain”, to have a good time. Therefore, sports and hobbies may actually be the same thing.

The question is always whether it is a physical activity or not. Obviously, billiard players do not burn as many calories as a soccer player or tennis player, but we also burn them of course. It is physical because the championships can last 8, 10 hours or even several days, and one must be physically fit to endure such a marathon.

Billiards is a mental sport. The vast majority of players agree that 70, 80 or even 90% of success in this discipline is due to the "head". It requires strategy, calculation, concentration, self-control, enduring pressure and a long list of mental qualities.

Billiards follows the same pattern as other "games" more recognized as a sport, such as chess, darts or archery. In all of them, mental activity predominates over physical activity, but they are still sports.

As a billiard player, I (and everyone who competes) feels like an athlete. Although it is clear that it may also be that you only take it as a hobby, an entertainment to disconnect.

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Obviously, it depends on the motivation, the objectives, the goals that you set for yourself when playing. It doesn't matter whether you play once a month with your friends to distract yourself, or you train once a week thinking about the next tournament, or that you play every day because it is your job, you compete all over Europe and you are a super pro.

I hope that with these arguments it will be easier to convince anyone that billiards is a sport. Other day we will talk about whether or not this should be an Olympic sport.

What do you think?

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