It is a specialty of billiards widespread especially in the countries of the former Soviet Union. It is played on a pool table of 360 x 180 cm ( 12 feet) using the cues and 15 billiard balls.
Pool table game attracted the Russian nobility so much that in 1718 Tsar Peter the Great, by an official decree, imposed billiards as an obligatory hobby during the feasts of the nobility and Tsar Alexander II in honor of his coronation received as a gift from Napoleon III a richly ornamented pool table.