Pool glossary
Killer
The British and Irish name for three-strikes pool.
What it means
A pub pool game in which each player has a set number of lives, takes one shot per turn, and loses a life for failing to pot. Last player standing takes the entry money. It is the same game Americans call three strikes.
Where the word comes from
Pub vocabulary. Wikipedia classifies it as "a multi-player folk variant of straight pool", and notes that its appeal is handling an unlimited number of players with a winner-takes-all stake.
How it sounds at a table
"Killer, quid a life?" "Three lives, winner takes it."
What it means in a three-strikes night
If you learned the game in Britain or Ireland you learned a few rules Americans mostly do not play: a scratch usually costs a second life, potting the black often buys one back, and some houses sell extra lives for another coin. All of them work fine in an American bar; they just need saying out loud, because nobody will assume them.
The mistake people make
Assuming both names mean exactly the same ruleset. They name the same game, not the same house rules.
Terms that come up alongside it
Written out rather than linked only, because looking up one term usually means you are standing at a table and do not want four more taps.
- Three strikes
- The format: one shot a turn, three misses and you are out. A multi-player elimination format in which players take one shot each in a fixed rotation, lose a life for failing to pocket, and are eliminated at three.
- Life
- The British name for a strike. Same thing, counted upward. A life is one of the chances you start a Killer game with — normally three.
- Strike
- A missed turn. Three of them and you are out. In three-strikes pool, a strike is what you collect when your turn ends without a ball going in a pocket.
- Scratch
- Pocketing the cue ball, or knocking it off the table. A scratch is the cue ball going down a pocket or leaving the table entirely.
Where it comes up
Killer matters most in three-strikes pool, where a single turn is one shot and the cost of getting something wrong is a life rather than a visit to the table. If you are learning the game, the guide to running a night puts most of this vocabulary in context, and the format pages show which games the term applies to and which it does not.