Cake

Cake is a game for 4-6 players. The game consists of frames and the person with the most frames won is the winner of the game. At the beginning of the game the order of the play is decided the following way: The numbers from 2 to 7 are written on separate paper pieces which are folded up so that the number cannot be seen, put into the ball case and shuffled. Then each player takes one piece and the order of the play is the order of the taken numbers. The paper pieces are put back, they will be needed during the game, too.

Start of the frame

At the beginning of each frame, all the object balls are set up to form a triangle with 6 red balls on the edges and the colours in the middle (hence the name "cake"). The triangle is placed like in snooker, but the apex red stands on the pink spot. The first shot of the frame, played from the "D", should look like a breaking in pool and at least two object balls must hit a cushion or a red must enter a pocket or the shot is a foul (oh poor cue tip and poor balls, but this was the worst part of the game, I promise you ;-). Every player has zero points at the beginning of the frame, and each foul counts as minus one (this is best handled by setting the pointers of the scoreboard to ten initially).

Potting

• If a player is below two points, he can only pot colours into the two center pockets and reds into any of the six pockets (this means that every object ball is "on" in snooker terms). Each red potted scores one point, but no points are given for the colours.
• If a player reaches two points at the first time in the frame, he takes one paper piece, but he doesn't show it to the other players. The number taken indicates a colour ball, and from this point on this ball will be his. This is very important as the winner of the frame is the person who pots his own ball into a corner pocket.
• If a player has two or more points, he may pot any of the object balls into any of the pockets. If he pots his colour into a corner, he then shows his paper piece to the others and the frame is over.

Other rules

• In "cake" it is not allowed to use equipment other than the cue. Shots made using them are foul shots. (It is interesting but one often forgets this rule, resulting in minus one point...)
• Potting a colour into a pocket having less than two points is
  • a foul if he didn't want to pot it there.
  • unfair play if the shot was deliberate. In this case he is disqualified from the frame being played.
• The frame is over and there is no winner if no colour remains on the table and none of the players have announced a win (see above).

Apart from these, the normal snooker rules apply. That is, it is a foul to touch balls, to force balls off the table, to cause the white enter a pocket, to shoot with none of the legs touching the floor and so on. The player remains at the table if he could pot a ball "cake-legally". There are no such rules as "free ball", "you fouled, please shoot again" etc. For better players the two-point limit for potting colours can be raised to three.

There is quite a bit of luck involved in "cake", which enables weaker players to win. Of course this game has completely different tactical approaches than snooker, but this is what makes it "interesting". For example, it is sometimes a good idea to pretend that you're trying to pot your colour into the center pocket (making sure you don't, of course). If your colour is no longer on the table (or it wasn't there even when you took the paper piece ;), try to get rid of all the other colours, so that the others can't win. Always try to guess what colour is whose and play according to this, if you can.