Brief history of WSR

[Lonestar_jim]

Chalk

Well, relying on my limited knowledge about pool history, I'm interested about a few facts about global ruleset development and I'd like someone to correct me if I got something wrong.

So, a long time ago, in a land far, far away, pool was becoming more and more popular, but the problem was there were several organizations who each promoted their own set of rules. Also, the majority of players played by casual rules where pretty much every bar or group of friends on the planet used a different version of the rules. And then, during that dark age, the gods of pool descended and gave us the World Standardized Rules in order to unite the masses and stop the chaos.

Many years passed. There are still many organizations who recognize only their own rules. Each bar still has its own ruleset. There are possibly much more players than before, but the differences are even greater, and the chaos remains everywhere.

Now, I'd like to know what was the procedure, the exact criteria used for establishing the WSR? I can only guess they tried to make the most balanced ruleset which would remain as simple as possible. Also, why WSR never had a foothold among the masses, including the casual players, if it's supposed to be the best version of pool rules?

When this man gets into the history, styles, and preferences of billiard chalk we're in for a real treat !

Troll, yes I'll make an exception for you.

Smacktard, not a chance.

 

[Bob Jewett]

One of the things that the WPA introduced with the WSR was a 5-year period between significant changes. This was a very good thing compared to the BCA approach of constantly fiddling with the rules. It was hard to remember from one year to the next what the rule for X was. For a while the BCA had both three fouls and BIH anywhere at eight ball. That lasted a year.

 

[Cameron Smith]

Every competitive activity has casual and serious participants and casuals always out number serious players. The divide is dependent on the level of visibility of the professional game. Casual hockey players will have much greater grasp of the rules than casual badminton players I should think. In fact I played some backyard badminton over the weekend and upon perusing the internet for some professional matches, I noticed we got almost all the rules wrong.

The point is I think most hobby's are performed under some local set of guidelines, which is fine. But if anyone has an intention of competing amongst the serious players they need to learn a set of rules that are designed for players of that skill level and designed to work for competition.

To give another example, in English Billiards there is are rules that indicate you can not play more than 15 consecutive cannons (caroms), that you must make your cue ball pass the balk line once during a break of between 80-100 points in order to continue your break past 100. There are more to this nature, but all of this assumes that I can make a break of 30 in billiards. I can not, and have really no need to bother with these rules because I couldn't make more than 15 consecutive cannons if I tried.