The words of pool, explained

Pool has a vocabulary of its own, and league tables use a good part of it. These are the words you will meet most, in alphabetical order. For how they fit together in a game, see the rules in short.

• Ball in hand. After a foul, the opponent may put the cue ball anywhere on the table before their shot — except after a scratch on an 8-ball break, when it goes behind the head string.
• Bank shot. An object ball sent off a cushion and into a pocket.
• Break. The first shot of a rack, into the full rack of balls.
• Break and run. Winning a rack from the break without the opponent getting a shot.
• Bye. A round in which a player has no match, because the number of players is odd.
• Call. To say which ball goes into which pocket before shooting, as 8-ball and 10-ball require.
• Combination. A shot where the cue ball hits one object ball into another, which goes in.
• Double round robin. A league format in which everyone plays everyone twice.
• Foul. A shot that breaks the rules — the wrong ball first, a scratch, no cushion after contact. It gives the opponent ball in hand.
• Golden break. Winning the rack on the break, by pocketing the 9 in 9-ball.
• Group. In 8-ball, the solids (1 to 7) or the stripes (9 to 15) — the balls a player has to clear before the 8.
• Head string. The imaginary line across the table at the second diamond from the breaking end; the break is played from behind it. The area behind it is the kitchen.
• Hill-hill. Both players one rack from winning — 6–6 in a race to 7. A hill-hill loss is a defeat in the deciding rack, and in many leagues it still earns a point.
• Kick shot. A shot in which the cue ball goes off a cushion before reaching the object ball, usually to get out of a snooker.
• Lag. How the first break is often decided: both players send a ball to the far cushion and back, and the one finishing closer to the near cushion chooses who breaks.
• Object ball. Any ball other than the cue ball.
• Push-out. In 9-ball and 10-ball, the shot straight after the break may be declared a push-out: the cue ball can go anywhere, and the opponent chooses who plays next.
• Race. The length of a match, in racks: in a race to 7 the first to win seven racks wins.
• Rack. One game, from the break to the winning ball. Also the triangle the balls are set up in, and the act of setting them up.
• Rack difference. Racks won minus racks lost over a season — one of the usual tie-breakers in a league table.
• Round robin. A league format in which everyone plays everyone once.
• Run out. Pocketing every ball left on the table in one visit, to win the rack.
• Safety. A shot played not to pocket a ball but to leave the opponent nothing to hit.
• Scratch. The cue ball going into a pocket. A foul.
• Snooker. In pool, being left with the object ball hidden behind another ball, so it cannot be hit directly.
• Spot, or re-spot. To put a ball back on the table, on the foot spot, after it was pocketed in a way that does not count.
• Three-foul rule. In 9-ball and 10-ball, three fouls in a row by one player, on three successive shots, lose the rack.
• Walkover. A match given to one player without being played, usually because the other did not turn up. In a league table it counts as a win by the full race.