Cowboy pool (or simply cowboy) is a hybrid

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 po ...

game combining elements of

English billiards English billiards, called simply billiards in the United Kingdom and in many former British colonies, is a cue sport that combines the aspects of carom billiards and pool. Two (one white and one yellow) and a red are used. Each player or team ...

through an intermediary game, with more standard pocket billiards characteristics. The game employs four balls, the

cue ball A billiard ball is a small, hard ball used in cue sports, such as carom billiards, pool, and snooker. The number, type, diameter, color, and pattern of the balls differ depending upon the specific game being played. Various particular ball pro ...

and three others, numbered one, three, and five. A game of Cowboy pool is contested as a to 101 points, with those points being awarded for a host of different shot types. Dating back to 1908, the game is a strictly amateur pastime.

History

The parent game of cowboy pool is

, which is itself a hybrid of three predecessor

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 ...

games – the winning game, the losing game and the carambole game (an early form of straight rail) – and dates to approximately 1800 in

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

. There are a number of pocket billiard games directly descended from English billiards, including ''bull dog'', ''scratch pool'', ''thirty-one pool'' and ''thirty-eight''. Thirty-eight is the intermediary game from which cowboy is directly derived. This precursor game was first reported on in the ''

Democrat and Chronicle The ''Democrat and Chronicle'' is a daily newspaper serving the greater Rochester, New York, area. At 245 East Main Street in downtown Rochester, the ''Democrat and Chronicle'' operates under the ownership of Gannett. The paper's production fac ...

'' on 18 January 1885: "there is a new billiards game called 'thirty-eight'. It appears to have met with special favor among the many devotees of pool". Cowboy is very similar to thirty-eight, with the major difference being that thirty-eight requires the use of two cue balls. It is unknown how thirty-eight transitioned to the modified ruleset mandated by cowboy pool, nor the derivation of its name. The first mention of Cowboy pool is in a 1908 rule book, published about the same time that

eight-ball Eight-ball (also spelled 8-ball or eightball, and sometimes called solids and stripes, spots and stripes or rarely highs and lows) is a discipline of pool played on a billiard table with six pockets, cue sticks, and sixteen billiard balls ...

(under a prior name) was first gaining popularity. Despite being strictly amateur – aside from a small sanctioned tournament held in 1914 – the game still remains listed in authoritative rule books alongside just a handful of other games.

Rules

Conventional cowboy pool uses only four balls, the

and three numbered balls, the one, three, and five. The balls have a set opening placement: the one-ball is placed on the ; the three-ball on the ; and the five-ball on the . As in the game of

snooker Snooker (pronounced , ) is a cue sport played on a rectangular table covered with a green cloth called baize, with six pockets, one at each corner and one in the middle of each long side. First played by British Army officers stationed in ...

, balls that are pocketed are immediately respotted to their starting position. Beginning with from the – the area behind a pool table's head string – the incoming player must contact the three-ball first. If the player fails to do so, the opponent may either force the player to repeat the , or elect to break themself. To win the match, a player needs to score 101 points. For the first 90, points are scored in three ways: one point for performing a on the cue ball into any two object balls; two points for caroming into all three ; and a player scores the face value of any ball pocketed. The maximum score possible on any single shot is 11 points, achieved by caroming off and pocketing all three balls. The failure to score in one of the delineated manners on any shot ends the player's at the table. All shots in result in the player losing all points scored during the inning (not just those on the fouled stroke), and the opposing player comes to the table with the cue ball in position – except in the case of a , which results in ball-in-hand from the kitchen. The 90th point in cowboy pool must be reached exactly, and the failure to do so is a foul resulting in a loss of turn. For example, this means that a player with 89 points, who then scores 2 points rather than exactly 1, has committed a foul. Once the 90-point benchmark is reached, all points up to the 100th must be made by caroms. The pocketing of balls during this phase of the game gains no points. The final point necessary to reach 101 and the win must be made by a – an intentional scratch made by caroming the cue ball off one of the three object balls.

References

Bibliography

* {{Cue sports nav Carom billiards Pool (cue sports)