Baize is a coarse woollen (or in cheaper variants cotton) cloth, sometimes called "felt" in American English based on a similarity in appearance. It is most often used on snooker and billiards tables to cover the and .
The surface finish of baize is not very fine (and thus increases friction, perceptibly slowing the balls down, from a player's perspective). Baize is available with and without a perceptible nap; snooker, in which understanding of the effects of the nap is part of the game, uses the nappy variety, while pocket billiards (pool) and carom billiards use the napless type. Table baize is available in many grades, with pool halls preferring smooth, "fast" worsted woollen baize, while rather more fuzzy, "slow" cloth is common used for .
For gaming use it is traditionally dyed green, in mimicry of a lawn (see Cue sport, "History"), thus the common (British English) phrase "the green baize", a metaphoric way to refer to snooker itself. Today, a wide variety of colours are now used for tables (for other uses such as clothing it has always been available in other colours).
The word is related to the cloth term "bays" (sometimes encountered as "bays and says").
See also
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Last updated on Wednesday September 24, 2008 at 15:24:24 PDT (GMT -0700)
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