Published: 25 February 2013

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Still popular in multi-discipline tournaments around the world

One-cushion was historically called cushion caroms. Unlike straight rail and balkline, a point in one-cushion requires that the cue ball touch at least one cushion in addition to contacting the two object balls.

Over time as the quality of play evolved in the various carom disciplines, so too did the games themselves in order to slow down the scoring onslaught and the tedium created by unlimited runs. And as did each of the other carom games, eventually the popularity of one-cushion gave way to the present day favorite three cushion billiards in the United States.

Throughout its history, the U.S. title in one-cushion (while it was more commonly known as cushion caroms) has only been held by six players: Joseph Dion, William Sexton, Maurice Daly, George Slosson and the indomitable Willie Hoppe, who held it for 11 years from 1933 to 1944.

Today, cushion caroms is rarely played in the U.S., but it still enjoys popularity in Europe where it is featured as one of the five games making up the annual billiards pentathlons, the other four games being 47.1 balkline, straight rail, 71.2 balkline and three-cushion billiards.