Billiards
Ten balls, thirteen shots, one quiet table.
Billiards on Tapbreak is single-player pool, played free in your browser. Ten balls sit scattered on a quiet table and you have thirteen shots to sink them all. There is no opponent and no break: the rack is laid out before you arrive, the same layout for every player that day. Pull back, read the chalk line, and commit.
The physics is honest. Balls slide, then roll; thin cuts need real pace; a smashed shot at the edge of a pocket rattles the jaws and can spit back out. But the table is on your side more than a real one would be, and the aim guide shows you exactly where the first touch lands. What it never shows is how hard to hit. That part stays yours.
How to play
- Press anywhere on the table and pull back. The shot goes the opposite way, and the farther you pull, the harder it goes. Release to shoot, or slide back to where you started to cancel.
- On a keyboard, ← and → turn the cue — a tap nudges it a fraction of a degree, a hold sweeps faster and faster, and Shift keeps it surgical. Holding Space charges a shot that fires on release.
- The chalk line traces your cue ball to its first touch, with a ghost circle at the contact and a short tail showing where the struck ball will set off. Reading that tail is most of the game.
- Every ball pocketed scores, and the second ball in one shot pays double, the third triple, and so on.
- Scoring shots back to back build a run multiplier, ×2 and then ×3, chalked on the bottom rail. A shot that pots nothing wipes it.
- One ball on every table is chalked — dusty blue with white speckles. Pot it and it hands back two shots.
- Style pays extra: a ball that never touches a rail on its way in is clean, a ball potted off a cushion is a bank, and a ball that crosses half the table is a long roll.
- Pocket the cue ball and it's a scratch: points come off and the cue returns to its spot. The shot is still spent.
- The last ball is the jackpot. Every shot you didn't need pays out on it, so clearing early is where the big totals live.
Your statistics
One rack a day
Each day deals one seeded rack, identical for everyone. Your first attempt is the one that counts: clear the table and your streak grows, and your score joins the day's leaderboard either way. There is nothing random once the balls are placed. No opponent gets a lucky roll, no break scatters differently for your neighbour. If you missed, you missed.
Once today's table is settled, the play button keeps dealing fresh racks for practice, as many as you like, none of them recorded.
Aiming without a mouse-length of table
The pull-back control is the whole interface. Because you can start the pull anywhere, your finger never covers the cue ball on a phone, and a longer pull moves the angle less per pixel, which is the fine-aim lever: pull far, then walk the line onto the ball. It plays identically with a mouse. People who prefer keys get a slower, surgical version of the same thing with the arrow keys.
Scoring, style and the run
The first ball of a shot scores 100, the second 200, the third 300. Style stacks on top: a clean pot (no rail, no rattle) adds 60, a bank adds 120, a double bank 250, a three-rail tour 400, a long roll across half the cloth 100, and a kiss shot — a ball the cue never touched, played in through another — adds 100 more. A ball that clatters the pocket jaws and drops anyway is announced as rattled in, for free.
Then there is the run. Score on consecutive shots and the multiplier chalked on the bottom rail climbs to ×2, then ×3, and every point above passes through it. A blank shot wipes it clean. The chalked ball hands back two shots when it drops, the last ball pays a jackpot of every shot you didn't spend, and a careful player quickly learns the order matters more than the potting.
Pockets with a temper
A pocket here is not a magnet. Roll a ball in at sensible pace and it drops, whatever the angle. Smash one at the edge of the mouth and it clatters off the back of the pocket. Usually it rattles around and falls anyway, with a noise you'll learn to enjoy, but a truly violent edge clip comes back out onto the cloth. Centered shots are always safe at any speed. The lesson costs one shot and stays learned.
More tables: 9-ball and 8-ball
The daily game isn't the only rack in the room. 9 Ball Pool puts nine numbered balls on the cloth: the cue must touch the lowest one first, and sinking the 9 ends the game on the spot, combos included. 8 Ball Billiards is the classic ending played solo — clear seven colours in any order, then the black, and dropping the 8 early loses the table outright. Both are unlimited practice: no daily, no streak, nothing recorded.
Streaks and the daily archive
Clear tables on consecutive days and you build a streak. A rack that beats you resets it. Every past day lives in the archive with the exact same scatter that shipped that morning, free to replay without touching your record. Since the physics has no dice in it at all, an archive replay is a genuine second attempt at the same table.