Excerpts from an article on Pool Etiquette written by the Monk’s Apprentice.
We all know the basic rules but in order to be complete, here is a brief summary.
When it is your shot, shoot.
When it is your opponent’s turn, sit down and shut up. If you have been playing regularly with someone for less than ten years and you know that person’s last name, you’re probably talking too much. If you make any move toward the table while your opponent is shooting you have just conceded that game.
When it is your opponent’s shot and you’re sitting there watching quietly, you have as much use for a piece of chalk as a doctor might have for a book entitled, “Fair Pricing Practices.” As you give the table back to your opponent, dig deep and find it in your heart to leave the chalk with it.
If you play on tables with drop pockets here are the steps to the breaking/racking dance. The player breaking retrieves the balls from the two side pockets and the corner pockets at the head of the table and rolls them gently to the player racking, who will pick the balls out of the corner pockets at the foot of the table. Nothing looks stupider than two players circling the table and bumping into each other.
We know of course that we do not talk to our opponents during a game. Someone practicing alone deserves equal if not greater consideration. The practice table is sacred ground and I have yet to see a player working on long shots while sporting a sign that says, “I’m lonely and only pretending to look interested in pool.” When someone is practicing, that person is thinking and studying in addition to shooting and deserves the utmost respect and privacy. And if you’re one of those guys that walk up, uninvited, to bother women while they’re practicing, open that little zippered pocket near the top of your left sleeve. It holds a cyanide pill for you to swallow in case you’re captured by the enemy. Just eat it now because you’re such an ass that the enemy has no use for you either.
Pool is a tough game that is played in close contact with the opponent. The same rigors and challenges exist for everyone and we must play in consideration of that fact. So the last, and perhaps most important, rule of etiquette is sportsmanship. Learn to accept victory and defeat with equal grace and to congratulate your opponent honestly regardless of the outcome.
To Guest
Book link