How many balls and what color do they use to play billiards?

In a standard game of American 3-cushion Billiards, three balls are used in the game. One of them is red, two are white. One of the white balls is marked with a black dot.

Regarding Pin Billiards, as Tim mentioned, there are several variations and Billiard games played with three to nine pins or "skittles" :

http://www.tradgames.org.uk/games/Pin-Billiards.ht...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-pins (once you're at this site, you can click on the various countries for rules to different Pin Billiard games -from 0-9 pins).

Five-pins (Italian cinque birilli), also known as Italian stecca, five-pin billiards, 5-pins, 5-quillas, Italian billiards (Italian biliardo all'italiana), and simply Italiana, with a variant known as nine-pins or goriziana, is a usually carom but sometimes pocket form of cue sport, popular especially in Italy and Argentina but also in some other parts of Latin America and Europe, with international, televised professional tournaments.

I hope this answers your question -

LAG

The standard game of Billiards uses 1 red 1 Yellow and 1 White ball.

It used to be 1 red and two white balls one of the white having a black dot on it, but that was changed some years ago mainly for TV viewing as it was easier to distinguish the different colours.

True English billiards is played with 2 red balls and 1 white ball. The table has no pockets and it is a "carom" game. You have to hit at least one rail with the white ball and have it bank and hit the two red balls. I never really got into it that much. RF

I don't know how popular the games are, but perhaps the most standard is a 5 pin, 3 ball game. There is also a 9 pin game, Goriziana, played more in Italy, as well as other games involving more pins and more balls.

You play billiards with 3 balls a red one, a yellow one, and a ivory one

depending on which ball you start with usally a in off cannon is maxium points