If the cue ball is touching an object ball, then the balls must be respotted: red on its spot and opponent's ball in the centre spot, with the striker to play from in-hand. To start the game, the object balls are placed in a triangular rack. Once all of a player's (or team's) group of object balls are pocketed, the player attempts to sink the 8 ball. If a foul occurs, two points are awarded to the opposing player who has the choice of playing from where the balls lie or they can be respotted. If playing in-hand and all balls on the table are in baulk, and contact is not made with any ball, this is a miss; 2 points are awarded to the opponent, who must play from where the balls have come to rest. After the balls are scattered with a break shot, a player is assigned either the group of solid or striped balls once they have legally pocketed a ball from that group. If both the middle and pyramid spots are occupied, it goes back on the spot. The playing area of a standard tournament table measures 11 feet 8 inches by 5 ft 10 in (3.569 m by 1.778 m) with a tolerance of 1⁄2 inch (1.26 cm) in both directions, though smaller ones, down to half size, are often found in snooker halls, pubs and home billiard rooms.

1⁄16 in with a tolerance of 0.05 mm) and they must weigh the same to a tolerance of 0.5 g within a set. The winner is determined by a player reaching a fixed number of points set at the start of the game, or by which player is leading at the end of a timed game. These rules continued to exist in English billiards until 1983, when a standard of two points for all fouls was introduced. BCA Rules Committee (2004). Billiards: The Official Rules and Records Book. Billiards, Inc. c. 1970. A general rules booklet on pool games in general, including eight-ball, nine-ball and several others. There are a number of pocket billiard games directly descended from English billiards, including bull dog, scratch pool, thirty-one pool and thirty-eight. There are seven solid-colored balls numbered 1 through 7, seven striped balls numbered 9 through 15, an 8 ball, Choose a Billiard Cue and a cue ball. By 1925, the game was popular enough for the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company to introduce purpose-made ball sets with seven red, seven yellow, one black ball, and the cue ball, which allowed spectators to more easily see which suit each ball belonged to. To see who will be the starting player, players perform a lag, where both simultaneously hit a cue ball up the table, bouncing it off the top cushion so that it returns to baulk (the first quarter-length of the table).

It becomes a "line ball" and may not be played directly from baulk. On the break shot, no balls are pocketed and fewer than four balls reach the cushions, in which case the incoming player can demand a re-rack and take the break or force the original breaker to re-break, or may take ball-in-hand behind the head string and shoot the balls as they lie. Two cue balls (one white and one yellow) and a red object ball are used. The game arose from two changes made, namely that the 8 ball must be pocketed last to win, and that each player may pocket only half of the other object balls. Nevertheless, the rules for eight-ball may be the most inconsistent of any billiard game, as there are several competing sets of "official" rules. These are used for amateur and professional play. It also became favored in British colonies; the game's longest-running champion was an Australian, Walter Lindrum, who held the World Professional Billiards Championship from 1933 until his retirement in 1950. The game remains popular in the UK, although it has been eclipsed by snooker. The other cue ball remains off the table until the opponent's first turn, when they play in hand from the "D".

Up until the first organised professional tournament in 1870, all English billiards champions were decided by challenge. Roberts's 21-year reign lasted until he lost to William Cook in 1870. That year was also the first in which an English billiards challenge match was held in the United States. The first governing body of the game, the Billiards Association, was formed in the UK in 1885, a period that saw a number of sporting bodies founded across the British sporting world. To start, the player who could strike a ball at one end of the table and get the ball to come to rest nearest the opposite cushion without lying against it earned the right to shoot for points first. Matches held under professional regulations include a rule forcing the player to execute a shot in a way to have his cue ball cross the baulk line, heading towards the baulk cushion, once between 80 and 99 points in every 100 in a running break. 2 points. This influence on the English game appears to have come about through the popularity of French tables in English coffee houses; London alone had over two thousand such establishments in the early 18th century.