Cue sports, equipment and the betting line
The Journal
Pool, snooker and carom, read from the pages of Dooly’s ProShop of Halifax, Nova Scotia — its catalogue, its service rates, its history of the game and its answers to the questions players actually asked — re-set here as a journal, with new reporting alongside. The Journal sells nothing, ships nothing and services nothing: every price on these pages is the one the catalogue carried when it was archived.
Seven desks, 263 pages. The count under each name is what is actually on the site, not what a catalogue once claimed.
What Size Pool Table Actually Fits Your Room: The Clearance Math That Decides Before You Buy
The 19 Oz Myth: Why Your First Cue Shouldn't Start With a Number
Air Hockey vs Foosball: The Room-Shape Problem Nobody Talks About
Why Your 8-Ball Break Might Not Count—Even If You Sink the 8
Playing the Ghost: The Solo Drill That Turns Pool Practice Into a Number You Can Track
Snooker Betting Markets Explained: What Canadian Bettors Actually See on the Board
The Split Authority of Cue Sports: Who Writes the Rules and Who Runs the Tours
Room-fit chart
A table is sold by the size of its playing surface. A room is sold by nothing at all — so before anything else, measure the floor. Shorter cues exist for tight spots, and they change these numbers.
Room = table + 5 ft on every side, because a pool cue is just under five feet long.
| Table | Room at five feet of clearance | Floor area | In the catalogue |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8 ft (4 × 8) | 14 × 18 ft | 252 sq ft | 1 table, from $5,495 |
| 9 ft (4.5 × 9) | 14.5 × 19 ft | 276 sq ft | 1 table, from $6,050 |
| 10 ft (5 × 10) | 15 × 20 ft | 300 sq ft | 1 table, from $7,095 |
| 12 ft (6 × 12) | 16 × 22 ft | 352 sq ft | 1 table, from $11,295 |
The table scrolls sideways on a narrow screen.
A room does not fit a pool table just because the cabinet squeezes between the walls. The hard rule is this: minimum room length equals the table's playing surface length plus twice the cue length, and minimum room width equals the table width plus twice the cue length.
Walk into any pool supply shop and you'll find playing cues between 17 and 21 ounces. Nineteen sits dead centre in that spread and it is the most common weight chosen by players at every skill level. Nineteen-ounce cues dominate the shelves.
The first question is not which game you want. It is which walls you can give up. A standard air hockey table needs clearance at both ends because players stand there to strike. A foosball table needs clearance along the long sides because that is where four bodies crowd in to work the rods.
The WPA World Standardized Rules mandate that fifteen object balls be racked "as tightly as possible in a triangle," with the apex ball on the Foot Spot and the 8-ball positioned as the first ball directly below that apex.
Rack the balls. Break. Take ball in hand anywhere on the table. Run the rack without missing, or lose the game to an opponent who never shoots back.
Single-event sports betting became legal in Canada on June 29, 2021, when Bill C-218 received Royal Assent and amended the Criminal Code. The change did not create a national market. Instead, it handed provinces the power to license and conduct betting within their borders.
The WPBSA governs snooker and English billiards. It does not run the professional tour you watch on television.
Where the game is followed
The shop pointed its readers at these from its own front page, and so do we, in the order the shop had them: the daily news and results of the professional game, the gaming desk that covers the betting side of it, and the reference database of the table-game world.
