Pool glossary
Pot
Two meanings: the prize money, and British for pocketing a ball.
What it means
In American usage the pot is the total prize money — every buy-in added together. In British and Irish usage, to pot a ball is to pocket it. Context almost always makes it obvious, but not always.
Where the word comes from
The money sense is from card games. The verb is as old as the game in Britain, and is why Killer rules read "pot a ball or lose a life".
How it sounds at a table
"What's in the pot?" "Hundred and twenty." / "He needs to pot this."
What it means in a three-strikes night
Worth saying out loud at the start: what the pot is, how many places it pays, and what the house takes if anything. A night where the pot is announced up front has no argument at the end; a night where it is worked out afterwards, by one person, with a phone calculator, sometimes does.
The mistake people make
Letting the pot sit loose on a bar. Count it in front of people, put it somewhere it is not a drink spill away from being a problem, and tell everyone the number.
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.
- Buy-in
- What each player pays to enter. The fixed amount every player puts in to join a tournament.
- House cut
- The share of the pot the venue keeps. A percentage of the entry money retained by the bar, usually to cover table time, a prize, or the cost of running the night.
- Payout
- How the pot is divided between the top finishers. The split of prize money by finishing position.
Where it comes up
Pot 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.