How to Lag to Decide who Breaks in a Pool Game

Video Transcript

"Hi! I'm Michael Lamendola with expertvillage.com, and today we're going to shoot some pool. It's an age-old question that most boys and men fight over, and have been fighting over for many years. Who goes first? Now, in pool it'll be too passé to flip a coin, so what we do is we lag. Lagging goes like this. I take the cue ball and I'm going to run it down the table and come back to this rail. The closer I can get it to this rail, the better. It doesn't matter if it touches the rail, but I want to get as close as I can. In my best attempt I'm going to strike the cue ball, it's going to come back, and it's going to rest where it will. Not so bad. If you get it between this dot and forward, you're doing good. You mark the back end with the chalk and then your opponent will lag. Person who gets closest, they get to break. Break. Let's start a game; let's break!"