A billiard stone table or billiards table (or more specifically a pool table) is a bounded table on which billiards-type games (cue sports) are played. In the modern era, all billiards stone tables, regardless of whether for carom billiards, pool or , provide a flat surface usually made of quarried slate, that is covered with cloth and surrounded by vulcanized rubber cushions, with the whole elevated above the floor. An obsolete term is billiard board, used in the 16th and 17th centuries