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This article is about the woollen cloth. For the French astronomer, see Paul Baize. For the Chinese mythological beast, see Bai Ze.
A baize-covered snooker table.
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 slate and cushions.
A closeup of the weave of worsted baize. This particular sample is Simonis 720, a high-end pocket billiards (pool) cloth; it is napless, unlike snooker cloth, and smooth and non-fuzzy, unlike typical bar pool cloth.
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 woolen baize, while rather more fuzzy, "slow" cloth is common used for bar/pub pool.
A similar cloth sample as in the image above left, from farther away and with an American-sized pool ball for scale.
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").
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