Baize
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Baize is a coarse woollen (or in cheaper variants cotton) cloth, sometimes incorrectly 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. The surface finish of baize is not very fine (and thus increases friction, perceptibly slowing the balls down, from a pool player's perspective), and has a perceptible nap. Baize is the preferred cloth for tables in snooker, in which understanding of the effects of the nap is part of the game. But this cloth is generally not favored for use on high-end pool or carom billiards tables; instead, napless worsted wool is preferred. For such use it is traditionally dyed green, in mimicry of a lawn (see Cue sport, "History"), thus the common phrase "the green baize" (though today a wide variety of colors are available for tables, while for other uses such as clothing it has always been available in other colors).
The word is related to the cloth term "bays" (sometimes encountered as "bays and says").
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