I wish more people would post interesting items that they find on the Internet that are related to pool like the one below by Mike Shamos. AFTER you read this and the other thread, if you are interested in knowing who Mike Shamos is you could google his resume which might impress you as it did me.
The Origin of The Term "Pool"
By: Mike Shamos, Curator, The Billiard Archive, Pittsburgh, PA. Used by permission.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The word "pool" means a collective bet formed from an ante by two or more players. The idea is for several players to put up a stake, with the whole pot (or "pool") going to the winner. This form of betting occurs naturally in games (not just billiards) having more than two players.
Until about 1800, billiard games were principally two-player contests. More balls were added to the game by the British during the first decades of the 19th century, which allowed room for more players. They played three principal types of cue games: English billiards (played with three balls and referred to as just "billiards" in England), pyramids (played with 15 unnumbered red balls) and a multi-player betting game played with a variable number of spotted and colored balls. The latter game came to be called "pool" because of the method of betting. It is possible to date this usage in English rather precisely; the game is mentioned in the 1819 edition of Hoyle but not in the 1817 edition. By 1823 the term had spread to France; we see references to "jeu de la poule" in rules posters of that year.
The British form evolved into a unique betting game called Life Pool, in which each player had a different ball, which he used as a cue ball, and a player who's ball was pocketed by another player lost a "life." Lose three lives and you were out the game. The winner of the pool was the last surviving player. Life Pool is one of three games (along with Black Pool and Pyramids) that were amalgamated later to produce Snooker. The contribution from Life Pool was that multiple colored balls were added to the 15 pyramid balls.
After the War of 1812, there was a distinct aversion to all things British in the United States. People would not play Life Pool here, but developed American versions of the game. "Pool" was used to distinguish multiple-ball games from the three-ball "billiard" games. By the 1840s, Americans were playing a game called Pool, (very similar to Life Pool), Pin Pool (having little bowling pins on the table as targets), and Fifteen-Ball Pool (played with object balls numbered 1-15, each ball being worth its numerical value in points. The first player to sink 61 points’ worth of balls -- one more than half the sum of the numbers 1 through 15 -- was the winner.
You might imagine that the origin of "pool room" is obvious -- it must be a place where pool is played. Wrong! Here a stunning coincidence creeps into the game’s history that has tainted pocket billiards as a gambling game ever since. One of the popular recreations in the days before organized team sports was horse racing, which was enjoyed by many people who had no access to race tracks. They would congregate during the day in establishments all around the country to place bets and learn the results of races by telegraph, an early form of off-track betting. These places were known as "pool rooms," because of the pari-mutuel system of collective betting that was employed.
It takes quite a bit of time between races, so pool rooms installed billiard tables for their patrons to play while passing away the dead time. Thus you could play pool in a pool room, and a fatal confusion was born. Of course, pool rooms were magnets for lowlifes of every description who had nothing better to do than wager money on ponies. The term "pool room" has seemed obvious ever since the 1840s.
Various attempts have been made to sanitize the name. "Billiard Parlor" and other euphemisms were used as synonyms. For a time (c.1911-1931), it was illegal to use the term "pool" in advertising a billiard parlor in New York State. "Pocket Billiards" was a term made up specifically to avoid using the word "pool". For some clever lyrics pointing out the differing connotations of "pool" and "billiards," listen to the song ‘Ya Got Trouble, from The Music Man. (The lines are peerless: "‘Jever take ‘n try to give an ironclad leave to yourself from a three-rail billiard shot?" The composer, Meredith Willson, was a piccolo player in John Philip Sousa’s band, and traveling around the country by train every day, must have seen many a pool room.)
I don’t know whether "pool room" sounds like a filthy place to teenagers today, but it does to my mother, who still cringes when I say I’m going out to one.
Michael Ian Shamos
Curator
The Billiard Archive
The Origin of The Term "Pool"
By: Mike Shamos, Curator, The Billiard Archive, Pittsburgh, PA. Used by permission.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The word "pool" means a collective bet formed from an ante by two or more players. The idea is for several players to put up a stake, with the whole pot (or "pool") going to the winner. This form of betting occurs naturally in games (not just billiards) having more than two players.
Until about 1800, billiard games were principally two-player contests. More balls were added to the game by the British during the first decades of the 19th century, which allowed room for more players. They played three principal types of cue games: English billiards (played with three balls and referred to as just "billiards" in England), pyramids (played with 15 unnumbered red balls) and a multi-player betting game played with a variable number of spotted and colored balls. The latter game came to be called "pool" because of the method of betting. It is possible to date this usage in English rather precisely; the game is mentioned in the 1819 edition of Hoyle but not in the 1817 edition. By 1823 the term had spread to France; we see references to "jeu de la poule" in rules posters of that year.
The British form evolved into a unique betting game called Life Pool, in which each player had a different ball, which he used as a cue ball, and a player who's ball was pocketed by another player lost a "life." Lose three lives and you were out the game. The winner of the pool was the last surviving player. Life Pool is one of three games (along with Black Pool and Pyramids) that were amalgamated later to produce Snooker. The contribution from Life Pool was that multiple colored balls were added to the 15 pyramid balls.
After the War of 1812, there was a distinct aversion to all things British in the United States. People would not play Life Pool here, but developed American versions of the game. "Pool" was used to distinguish multiple-ball games from the three-ball "billiard" games. By the 1840s, Americans were playing a game called Pool, (very similar to Life Pool), Pin Pool (having little bowling pins on the table as targets), and Fifteen-Ball Pool (played with object balls numbered 1-15, each ball being worth its numerical value in points. The first player to sink 61 points’ worth of balls -- one more than half the sum of the numbers 1 through 15 -- was the winner.
You might imagine that the origin of "pool room" is obvious -- it must be a place where pool is played. Wrong! Here a stunning coincidence creeps into the game’s history that has tainted pocket billiards as a gambling game ever since. One of the popular recreations in the days before organized team sports was horse racing, which was enjoyed by many people who had no access to race tracks. They would congregate during the day in establishments all around the country to place bets and learn the results of races by telegraph, an early form of off-track betting. These places were known as "pool rooms," because of the pari-mutuel system of collective betting that was employed.
It takes quite a bit of time between races, so pool rooms installed billiard tables for their patrons to play while passing away the dead time. Thus you could play pool in a pool room, and a fatal confusion was born. Of course, pool rooms were magnets for lowlifes of every description who had nothing better to do than wager money on ponies. The term "pool room" has seemed obvious ever since the 1840s.
Various attempts have been made to sanitize the name. "Billiard Parlor" and other euphemisms were used as synonyms. For a time (c.1911-1931), it was illegal to use the term "pool" in advertising a billiard parlor in New York State. "Pocket Billiards" was a term made up specifically to avoid using the word "pool". For some clever lyrics pointing out the differing connotations of "pool" and "billiards," listen to the song ‘Ya Got Trouble, from The Music Man. (The lines are peerless: "‘Jever take ‘n try to give an ironclad leave to yourself from a three-rail billiard shot?" The composer, Meredith Willson, was a piccolo player in John Philip Sousa’s band, and traveling around the country by train every day, must have seen many a pool room.)
I don’t know whether "pool room" sounds like a filthy place to teenagers today, but it does to my mother, who still cringes when I say I’m going out to one.
Michael Ian Shamos
Curator
The Billiard Archive
