Why Do So Many Bar Room Recreational 8-Ball Players Cling to the Nonsense Outdated Rules?

Just curious if this is just in our area (NC) or is it everywhere? Why are so many recreational bar room 8-ball players so ignorant as to the sensible 8-ball rules to play by?

Ball-in-hand behind the headstring on all scratches and when your only balls or 8-ball is behind the headstring you’re expected to kick down and back just to hit it - really? This is just one of the many screwed up ancient rules that makes absolutely no sense that still lives in many of not a majority of bars that have a few tables for customers to play on, generally while consuming alcohol.

How do you go about educating the regular players and changing the culture of rules to play by in a bar room, unless it’s the manager or owner who lays down the law? I’m guessing most of them are likely also ignorant of the rules or just don’t care.

It’s just amazing to me how these rules have managed to survive on such a widespread basis for half a century, when most of the players who adhere to them weren’t even born at the time the rules were changed?
Because there's 4 types of semiserious pool players all with different rules

Bar hags
League players
Advanced amateurs
Legit pros ( mostly guys who are unemployed/underemployed and sponge off family)
 
I think part of the blame has to go on tournament directors, league operators and bar owners/staff. I used to play in a fairly large local league that had a rule: "No safes." I don't remember what they did about kicking at balls behind the line after a scratch. "House Rules" could be the real rules.
You call the shot and play safe, without a facial expression.

We formed a team in a bar league to try and get them to play in my pool hall. Culture shock. In the first year finals they laid down ambitiously obvious safe...words were exchanged and it nearly came to blows. Half my team walked off because they play "real pool".
Second year we ran everyone over and they all hated us. There was one fight I missed where my exmilitary buddy head butted someone.

Very few bar league players ever left their corner bars to come play on the best equipment available. Maybe they don't drive. They definitely drink to excess and shouldn't drive.
 
1pocket much?
I play some 1 pocket, not a lot. Does an intentional foul get the shooter out of a jam or does it put the incoming shooter in a jam during 1 pocket? The intentional scratch in bar 8 ball is good for the person that fouls and bad for the opponent.
I play pool in a smaller town, not a major city that also has a lot of above average pool players for some reason, almost any bar you walk in to the players will be playing by BCA rules. If they are not using BCA rules the only thing that changes is BIH anywhere to BIH in the kitchen.
 
The thing is... There was never any penalty for not hitting the ball. Because I'm decent at kicking, I could play the fool and just miss when it benefited me. It's odd how often those misses left the cueball in a horrible position fort my opponent.
While it is frustrating to see people doing this, and tempting to do it myself, I always considered it a point of pride to play for a shot to the best of my ability under the silly "gentleman's hit" type rules.
 
I play some 1 pocket, not a lot. Does an intentional foul get the shooter out of a jam or does it put the incoming shooter in a jam during 1 pocket?
If played properly, it should put the opponent in a jam. It can be problematic if you are playing 3 foul rule though! They might just take the intentional right back at you.
 
I remember one bar rules pool comp with clarity...

They had a dumb rule about if the cueball scratched, you had to play ON the line and shoot forward..
With missing the 8Ball as loss of game.

So, I am on a runout, with one of my balls tied up in a cluster and 8ball is up the table behind the line.
I ran 5 balls, manage to get an angle on ball 6 to break out the last ball... couldn't get to it earlier, and I just miss the break out to be perfect but it flicks out his ball and I have to try a bank shot.
Which, went it but no shot on 8 ball...
So, I roll up tight on 8ball.

He has 7 balls up, options to play safe.
A couple of balls to shoot at which I would have done.
What does he do?
Shoots the cueball straight into the pocket.
No fair attempt on anything.
Dumb bar rules on full display...

So, all his balls are blocking simple up and down shot to hit the 8ball.
I have to try 4 rails...... and miss the 8ball by 3mm...
He shakes my hand as by bar rules, I missed the black.

Only morons want to play bar rules.
Zero skill.

I saw this chump at a real pool tournament a few months later.
Didn't play him in main draw.
But made sure I had a money match worth twice as much as that crappy pool comp.
WPA rules, 8ball, call shot, ball in hand.
I made my money off of him.
Bar tax paid.
 
While it is frustrating to see people doing this, and tempting to do it myself, I always considered it a point of pride to play for a shot to the best of my ability under the silly "gentleman's hit" type rules.

I get it and agree. Younger me had different thoughts. It's been over twenty years since I had to play those rules. The bars I went to were changing even then.
 
I remember one bar rules pool comp with clarity...

They had a dumb rule about if the cueball scratched, you had to play ON the line and shoot forward..
With missing the 8Ball as loss of game.

So, I am on a runout, with one of my balls tied up in a cluster and 8ball is up the table behind the line.
I ran 5 balls, manage to get an angle on ball 6 to break out the last ball... couldn't get to it earlier, and I just miss the break out to be perfect but it flicks out his ball and I have to try a bank shot.
Which, went it but no shot on 8 ball...
So, I roll up tight on 8ball.

He has 7 balls up, options to play safe.
A couple of balls to shoot at which I would have done.
What does he do?
Shoots the cueball straight into the pocket.
No fair attempt on anything.
Dumb bar rules on full display...

So, all his balls are blocking simple up and down shot to hit the 8ball.
I have to try 4 rails...... and miss the 8ball by 3mm...
He shakes my hand as by bar rules, I missed the black.

Only morons want to play bar rules.
Zero skill.

I saw this chump at a real pool tournament a few months later.
Didn't play him in main draw.
But made sure I had a money match worth twice as much as that crappy pool comp.
WPA rules, 8ball, call shot, ball in hand.
I made my money off of him.
Bar tax paid.
Zero skill, but you missed hitting the eight.

You also made the rookie mistake of sinking all of your balls without breaking the eight out.

So, yeah, a lack of skill and poor strategy was definitely on display.
 
it can be fun to take advantage of those goofy rules until somebody actually gets heated about it. Things like roll up no-rail snooker safeties, their-ball-first one pocket takeouts, and pushouts whenever you want, to name a few. its also fairly amusing to let them run down their group while pushing an army of balls around the 8 so they invariably kick at it and “lose.”

the first time i played a guy who wanted you to call whether it hit the rail first or went straight into the pocket was also the last time, though. i couldnt fade that lol
 
Or: uhm no you are allowed to pot a ball before the 8 in the same shot.
This one is so obtuse I forgot about it but it's come up several times over the years. If you make one of theirs on the same shot as one of yours, the one that went in first decides. More pool savvy but equally wrong; the shot is no good period.
 
The question shouldn't be the ruleset. Why 8-ball and why bar box anything? Problem solved.

Flame on.
 
Anything to stretch out the game, apparently.
The advent of the smaller coin-op table (with cavernous pockets) in the 50s, that didn’t return pocketed balls (thus, no more ‘spot shots’), would make the original slop 8-ball game (first one learned generally by kids & women, since no math/strategy really required) lightning fast. Calling the pocket/kisses/rails/etc. was one thing, but I must admit I was quite taken aback the first time I was forced to kick at a ball in the kitchen, instead of spotting it.
 
For a while the BCA felt it had to fiddle with the rules of eight ball every year. That was about the time that they were first running national eight ball championships.

In one of those strange rules iterations, it could be to your advantage to knock the eight ball onto the floor. (I don't remember the exact situation and the rules changed the next edition.) The situation came up in a tournament and so I knocked the eight ball onto the floor. I eventually won that tournament.

At one point they also had ball in hand anywhere for any foul and the three foul rule. It was a horrible mistake to run all but your last ball under those rules.
 
Proposed corrective action (Note: These steps must be performed in order)

Step 1: Ensure every bar in Poland and Taiwan has a pool table, and that the house rules there are close enough to WPA.

Step 2: Start World War III. Presumably, the current geopolitical dividing lines would make Poland and Taiwan major staging areas.

Step 3: Initiate a draft. This will put a large portion of the US bar age crowd from all over the country into these staging areas, areas that we've already groomed for 8-ball with proper rules to take place

Step 4: Win WW III (very important step), but only after our troops have had enough time to now prefer the WPA rule set for 8-ball

Step 5: Demobilize the troops, sending them back to into their own corners of the USA to spread the correct 8-ball rule set around
 
What rules should they be playing by? APA, TAP, BCA, VNEA, WPA? I think that's part of the problem, if we don't have one standard set of rules, you'll still have arguments, outside of bar rules.

Most rules for leagues and various "pro" organizations are close enough where only a few rules that are more or less OK to use come up. Say no push out in 9 ball for APA, that is not present in any other rules, but is not that horrible since you are going to be playing bad players that can't run out 2-3 balls with ball in hand most of the time anyway. However all the rules that have official documents you can find for have ball in hand and normal behind the line foul rules as well as consistent rules as to what a legal shot is with needing to contact a legal ball and a rail rail or make a ball.
 
It's not just a USA thing. Loads of countries have different rules for pool in different bars. In UK pool a big, simple difference is 'do you get 2 shots on the black?'. Some places you will. Some you won't.

USA bar rules are the strangest though. Basically there aren't any rules. You don't even have to bother hitting one of your balls. No ball-in-hand. No 2 shots. Just no foul at all.

Main rule is - you just have to go with the flow and play the rules that the locals play. They ain't changing any time soon...
 
USA bar rules are the strangest though. Basically there aren't any rules. You don't even have to bother hitting one of your balls. No ball-in-hand. No 2 shots. Just no foul at all.
The part people conveniently ignore about the typical bar rules is that you're expected to try for a shot. The one nice thing about it is that you are forced to be creative sometimes.
The problem is that people want to win so badly, they throw ethics and sportsmanship out the window immediately, and that attitude tends to snowball.
Don't get me wrong, I MUCH prefer BCA style play, but the "gentleman's hit" style can be fun if played without malice.
 
While "bar rules" can be very unfair/ridiculous/hilarious, in my mind one of the issues is "casual player" versus "competitive player". In that context pool is no different than many other games ... golf comes to mind. Casual players have very little understanding of the rules, while competitive players have better understanding (and hopefully are more compliant).

Dave
 
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