Pool glossary
On deck
The player whose turn is next.
What it means
The person who shoots after whoever is at the table. Calling it out loud is the simplest way to keep a rotation moving, because the on-deck player can be chalking up while the current one is still shooting.
Where the word comes from
Baseball again — the on-deck circle is where the next batter warms up. Pool borrowed it along with "strike".
How it sounds at a table
"Marcus is up, Priya on deck."
What it means in a three-strikes night
This is the single biggest time saver in a rotation night. A twenty-player rotation where nobody knows they are next loses ten or fifteen seconds between every shot — at four hundred shots in a night, that is over an hour. Naming the on-deck player, or putting them on a screen where everyone can see, is most of the difference between a night that runs and a night that drags.
The mistake people make
Announcing only the current shooter. The person who needs the information is the one who is not at the table yet.
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.
- Rotation
- Two meanings: the order of play, and a rule that you hit the lowest ball first. In a multi-player game, the rotation is the running order — who shoots after whom, and how it wraps round.
- 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.
- Running order
- The sequence players shoot in, fixed at the start of the night. The list of who shoots when, in order, wrapping from the last player back to the first.
Where it comes up
On deck 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.