Seven-ball is a

pool Pool may refer to: Water pool * Swimming pool, usually an artificial structure containing a large body of water intended for swimming * Reflecting pool, a shallow pool designed to reflect a structure and its surroundings * Tide pool, a rocky pool ...

game with rules similar to

nine-ball Nine-ball (sometimes written 9-ball) is a discipline of the cue sport pool. The game's origins are traceable to the 1920s in the United States. It is played on a rectangular billiard table with at each of the four corners and in the middle of e ...

, though it differs in two key ways: the game uses only seven as implied by its name, and play is restricted to particular pockets of the table. William D. Clayton is credited with the game's invention in the early 1980s.

Rules

At the start of the game, balls one through seven are in a

hexagon In geometry, a hexagon (from Ancient Greek, Greek , , meaning "six", and , , meaning "corner, angle") is a six-sided polygon. The total of the internal angles of any simple polygon, simple (non-self-intersecting) hexagon is 720°. Regular hexa ...

al configuration, with the 1-ball placed at the rack's , centered over the table's , the 7-ball placed at the rack's center, and all other balls placed clockwise ''(see photo top right)''. Immediately following the , the opponent must elect three pockets along one of the table's , and the player who broke is automatically assigned the three pockets situated along the opposite long rail. Once that selection is made, balls 1–6 may be in any pocket in rotation, starting with the one, as the object ball. Balls pocketed via combinations off of the object ball are legal. The 7-ball must be pocketed in the called side to be a legal win. Scratches on any object ball allow the opponent ball-in-hand, but the sunk ball remains potted. Scratching on the 7-ball is a loss. Pocketing the 7-ball in any other pocket than the called side is a loss. A special 7-ball was designed for television matches by Charles Ursitti (

billiards Cue sports are a wide variety of games of skill played with a cue, which is used to strike billiard balls and thereby cause them to move around a cloth-covered table bounded by elastic bumpers known as . There are three major subdivisions of ...

historian,

referee A referee is an official, in a variety of sports and competition, responsible for enforcing the rules of the sport, including sportsmanship decisions such as ejection. The official tasked with this job may be known by a variety of other titl ...

and

Willie Mosconi William Joseph Mosconi (; June 27, 1913 – September 17, 1993) was an American professional pool player from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Between the years of 1941 and 1956, he won the World Straight Pool Championship nineteen times. For mos ...

's one time manager) to more easily distinguish the 7-ball from the 3 on television. The ball adopts the of the with the color of the black , the "" of their respective namesake games. No special equipment is required for play; a regular set of pool balls and a nine-ball diamond rack turned sidewise are adequate. The original informal incarnation of seven ball led to a variant professional ruleset that enjoyed a brief heyday in the series ''

Sudden Death Seven-ball ''Sudden Death Seven-ball'' (also known as ''ESPN Sudden Death Seven-ball'' for promotional purposes) was an annual pocket billiards, pool tournament (and television show) held in the United States; it was broadcast on and sponsored by ESPN. ''SDS ...

'', broadcast on the American cable TV network

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...

from 2000 to 2005.

References

{{Cue sports nav Pool (cue sports)