Best place to play pool
Croquet, that game of mallets and wickets, lords and ladies and lawns, moved indoors and the result was billiards, a game of cue sticks and eight balls, with green felt simulating green grass. At Boston Billiard Club, a repeat winner in this category, it makes sense that a game that started on the grounds of manors and mansions has an aristocratic feel, with plush leather chairs, rows and rows of Brunswick Gold Crown tables, and tartish waitresses in long black boots. On Wednesday nights, ladies play for 25 percent off, and three together don't have to pay to play at all. There's Pool School on Mondays, and football fanatics will be pleased that five games play simultaneously on any given Sunday in season. No wonder it's a Phoenix pick for the best place to shoot some stick.

"Let's to billiards," suggests the doomed Egyptian queen in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. It's a good thing to quote while sipping (slamming?) a 40 out of a paper bag at Flat Top Johnny's in Kendall Square, another pool parlor that sweeps this category again in our readers' poll. Besides cheap beer (40s are $5, and bottles of Schlitz, Pabst, and Miller High Life are $2), Flat Top's has a set of sweet red-felt tables. The Monday-night nine-ball tourney is open to sharks and minnows alike; women play for half-off on Tuesday; and on Wednesday, Fez Night, local rock stars spin their favorite tunes starting at 10 p.m., and at 11 p.m., pool prices sink to nothing and all your games are free.

Boston Billiard Club, 126 Brookline Avenue, Boston, (617) 536-POOL, www.bostonbilliardclub.com; Flat Top Johnny's, 1 Kendall Square, Cambridge, (617) 494-9565, www.flattopjohnnys.com.