She LIKES the CRUTCH

A player about to take a shot on the 15 ball into the side pocket

Eight-ball, sometimes called stripes and solids and, more rarely, bigs and littles or highs and lows, is a pool game popular in much of the world, and the subject of international amateur and professional competition. Played on a pool table with six pockets, the game is so universally known in some countries that beginners are often unaware of other pool games and believe the word "pool" itself refers to eight-ball. The game has numerous variations, including Alabama eight-ball, crazy eight, English eight-ball pool, last pocket, misery, Missouri, 1 and 15 in the sides, rotation eight ball, soft eight, and others. Standard eight-ball is the second most competitive professional pool game, after nine-ball and for the last several decades ahead of straight pool.

Eight-ball is played with sixteen balls: a cue ball, and fifteen object balls consisting of seven striped balls, seven solid balls and the black 8 ball. After the balls are scattered on a break shot, the players are assigned either the group of solid balls or the stripes once a ball from a particular group is legally pocketed. The ultimate object of the game is to legally pocket the eight ball in a called pocket, which can only be done after all of the balls from a player's assigned group have been cleared from the table.

Contents [hide] 1 History 2 World Standardized Rules 2.1 Equipment 2.2 Setup 2.3 Break 2.4 Turns 2.5 Pocketing the 8 ball 2.6 Winning 2.7 Fouls 3 Informal rule variations 3.1 Canada 3.2 Latin America 3.3 North Africa 3.4 United Kingdom 3.5 United States 4 Derivative games and variants 4.1 British-style variant 4.2 Eight-ball rotation 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

History