I played the game "Cowboy"...

[ericyow]

A friend of mine introduced me to "Cowboy," which turned out to be a really fun game. It's a kind-of hybrid between pocket pool and straight rail billiards. It was fun. Anybody else ever play it?

It's one of those games that, I think, if I was in stroke I could tear it up, like cut-throat, only not quite THAT easy. I like that it implements caroms into the points system.

Here's a wiki link fwimc - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowboy_pool

-yow!

 

[CreeDo]

I played it a few times with friends and really liked it. The only complaint I have is that it seems almost too easy unless I misunderstand the rules.

The WP article on it has a confusing way of explaining things, it says you must 'carom' the cueball off two object balls. One way of interpreting that might mean that after contacting a ball, the cueball must then carom into two OTHER balls. I don't usually call the first hit (between the cueball and the first OB) a carom.

I'm pretty sure they mean you must hit the cueball into one object ball and have it then carom into a 2nd ball. That's how I played it and it was pretty fun. But it seemed a little too easy, or maybe playing to 101 was just too short a race. I never have even tried 3-c but I find caroming directly into another ball is dead easy. Maybe a nice variation is to require 1 cushion in between.

It should also be noted that even though sinking balls can add bonus points, you can't 'just' sink a ball, a carom has to happen on every shot.

I played a neat variation that I guess is called bottle pool where you carom into a bottle, and if you upset it, it's worth 5 points. Otherwise the rules were pretty similar.

 

[Tiger5150]

I used to play this game alot. It really helped me in making the 9 off of a carom shot. The game gets real fun between 90 and 100 points