as dining tables or as table tennis, foosball, or air hockey, tables, with removable hard tops. Home pool tables, which often lack a ball-return system, are commonly either 4 × 8 ft or 3.5 × 7 ft models, a medium between 3 × 6 ft. bar/pub tables and 4.5 × 9 ft tournament-size models. Low-end tables tend toward the smaller range, and may have MDF or wood beds as an alternative to slate; those with light-weight beds may be foldable for storage, as with table tennis. Miniature tables range in size from tabletop 1 × 1.6 ft to free-standing 2.5 × 5 ft models, and use scaled-down cues and balls. Heating Billiard table beds are commonly heated with electricity, in order to keep the cloth dry, and allow the balls to roll better. Queen Victoria (1819–1901) had a billiard table that was heated using zinc tubes, although the aim at that time was chiefly to keep the then-used ivory balls from warping. The first use of electric heating was for an 18.2 balkline tournament held in December 1927 between Welker Cochran and Jacob Schaefer Jr. The New York Times announced it with fanfare: "For the first time in the history of world's championship balkline billiards a heated table will be used..." An electrically heated table is required under international carom billiard tournament rules 'in order to ensure the best possible rolling', although temperatures are not specified. In tournaments, carom billiard tables have recommended heating temperatures of , while billiard associations may heat their carom tables to as much as . An average modern billiard heater has an output of 600 watts. If it is not switched off outside operating hours, consumption is 3,500 kilowatt-hour (kWh) per year, costing 525 euros (0.15 EUR/kWh). Switching off a billiard table heater whenever it is not used can save more than 50% in energy consumption and costs; this can be done automatically with timers. Another way to reduce energy consumption and costs is to use synthetic cloth rather than wool cloth, which requires much more energy to warm up. A disadvantage of synthetic cloth may be that certain types of games, such as balkline, may result in damaging the synthetic cloth too quickly because of the way players hit the balls. The 2022 Russia–European Union gas dispute caused rising energy costs around Europe, making heating billiard tables almost prohibitively expensive. The Royal Dutch Billiards