Strategy for "Killer Pool"

victorl

victorl

Where'd my stroke go?
Silver Member
Hey guys,
My local hall is replacing our weekly tournaments with "killer pool" to encourage more lower players to join. I've never played, but I understand the rules.

What I want to know is if there are any tips on etiquette or strategy to playing this game?

For example, I could easily make a ball and freeze the cue ball up to another ball or the rail. I could keep doing that and keep leaving the person after me with no shot, but seems kind of unfair.
Would that be considered dirty play?
 
The only strategy is to make a ball and leave no shot. It's not really pool but is a fun game with a lot of people.
 
Got it, thanks.
If it's such a cutthroat game, I wonder why my local hall is trying to push it as a game for lower level players.
I guess it's simple and easy to understand...
 
victorl said:
Hey guys,
My local hall is replacing our weekly tournaments with "killer pool" to encourage more lower players to join. I've never played, but I understand the rules.

What I want to know is if there are any tips on etiquette or strategy to playing this game?

For example, I could easily make a ball and freeze the cue ball up to another ball or the rail. I could keep doing that and keep leaving the person after me with no shot, but seems kind of unfair.
Would that be considered dirty play?
Click to expand...

You say "could easily make a ball" it is your shot next! it is easy said than done, you cannot play dirty all the time, exactly like saying i will never miss a ball..Your well power to win or show off is usually stronger than the well to play safe, especially if you are winning.
 
victorl said:
Got it, thanks.
If it's such a cutthroat game, I wonder why my local hall is trying to push it as a game for lower level players.
I guess it's simple and easy to understand...
Click to expand...

Probably because it's simple and fast. But the better players will almost always win unless they just have really bad luck.

I have won around $1200 playing this game.

Sometimes you do have to come with some shots so it's not always simple. A way to handicap it is for the better players to have less lives than the weaker players.

Which reminds me:

In Charlotte at the Green Room they had a tournament that was similar and was pretty cool. Each round was 1 game against a randomly drawn opponent. Each player had an amount of losses and they were out. I had 3 and later 2 losses and some players had five or more.

So when you lost the amount of games according to your handicap then you were out.

If I remember right we played alternately 9 ball and 8 ball each week. I believe they often had 30+ people playing.

That was a very fun tournament, it might still be going. You should suggest this to the room owner where you live.
 
naji said:
You say "could easily make a ball" it is your shot next! it is easy said than done, you cannot play dirty all the time, exactly like saying i will never miss a ball..Your well power to win or show off is usually stronger than the well to play safe, especially if you are winning.
Click to expand...

I never meant to say it's an easy game. I can see how it would get tough with good players, but most of the players who would join are C-B level, and I figure to get lots of chances.
 
I'm intrigued to find out if it will take off at your pool hall. I've always just played it for money with friends. Some games were for £1 per man, others for a few hundred GBP per man.

When playing with friends, or in a friendly manor its seen as unsportsmanlike to just leave the guy after you completely screwed. Instead you'd take the easiest pot available and try get an extravagant safety of 3 or 4 rails tucking up behing a ball. But all it takes is for someone to want to win that £10 pot too much and everyone thinks F-it, I'm playing cheap like them.

We usually play on an English Pool table, where the black ball counts as +1 life and the breaker gets the break for free meaning if they don't make a ball, they then shoot from where the CB lies and normal play resumes. We normally start from 3 lives, but with good players and a cheap match, you can run through 10+ racks before you find a winner, and the money put into the table starts to cost more than the prize fund. But this is when we don't try screw the next guy over. Good players playing to win, 3 lives will last no more than 3 or 4 racks at most.

We also do killer doubles. 4 players, 2 teams each has to pick a colour (red or yellow in english pool) before hand and I shoot at say, reds, then my opponent shoots and a yellow, then my partner shoots a red and so on. Same can easily be done with spots and stripes.

I remember playing for a mind blowing amount per man when I was 15 on a snooker table with just the reds. 6 old timers and me bought into a game that was £50 per life. I bought in for 4 lives (£200 for me at 15 was like me being bill gates today :) ) but others were buying in for 5+ lives and they had a rule you could re-buy back in as long as it wasn't down to the final 2 players. The pot got stupidly large and I was way out of my depth with an empty wallet. My 4 lives was good enough for 2nd and 40% of the pot and I walked out with over £900. I'd never seen that kind of money before in my life.

Its a great game and easy to think up new variations of it to keep it fresh and fun. Please let us know how it goes down at your pool hall.

Cheers.
 
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Okay, played the first killer pool tourney and it was pretty fun. We had 8 players, 2 A players and 3 Bs and 3 Cs. The As got 3 lives, Bs got 5 and Cs got 6.
Me and the other A kept leaving tough shots and the other players hated having to play after us. I felt kind of bad picking on the weaker players especially when they were low on lives so I stopped so hard trying to leave them safe.

We did three rounds and the winner of each round played each other in the final match.
(If someone wins twice, the runner-up in that round advances)

Myself, the other A player and a B player played the the finals and the other A won.

I thought it was a fun social game and gets everyone into it, but the weaker players don't really have a chance unless we give them an insane amount of lives.

I think I'll keep playing, but I prefer 1 on 1 tournament style play as killer pool isn't really pool to me.
 
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