How to Play Eight-Ball

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Michael Lamendola with expertvillage.com and today we're going to shoot some pool. Okay, we're here at Fantasia Billiards in beautiful downtown Burbank. You can look up Fantasia Billiards, by the way, by going to the web at www.fantasiabillards.com. And right now, we're going to play a little game of Eight Ball. And Eight Ball is probably the most common game of pool. And it uses all fifteen balls and the Q ball, of course. Now, to rack it, it's just like I described earlier in this little course. One ball goes up front, eight ball goes in the middle, and then you do the perimeter solid stripe, like so. Oops, I didn't do it right. There, solid stripe, solid stripe, solid stripe all the way around. Of course, make sure you tighten that rack, nice and tight. Again, if there's no dot on your table, find the center between these two dots, which you'll find between the side pocket and the corner pocket. So, two dots in, find the middle point, put that one ball right over it. Now, that's the rack. So, how do you play Eight Ball? Well, after the break, whoever makes the first ball is decided who's going to be solids and who's going to be stripes. So, after the break, if I make the six ball, then I'm solids, and then my opponent will be stripes, like this. Now, the object is to sink all of your type of ball and then, finally, sink the eight ball. If you sink the eight ball at any time during the game before you've sunk all of your balls, then you lose. There is one exception, a grand exception. If when you break, you sink the eight ball, you automatically win. Now, let me tell you, that's pretty rare. In all the years I've been playing pool, I've only done it once. So, it won't happen too often. So, simply put, someone's going to be solids and someone's going to be stripes. The object is the make all of your solids, or if you're stripes all of your stripes, and then go for the eight ball."