Pool glossary
Rack
Both the triangle and the balls arranged in it.
What it means
A rack is the frame used to set the balls up, and also the arrangement itself — "a new rack" means a fresh set of fifteen. In a long game it also means a unit of time: "that was three racks ago".
Where the word comes from
Nineteenth-century English for a framework. The triangle is a rack; so is the set.
How it sounds at a table
"Rack 'em." "Tight rack, please — last one was all over the place."
What it means in a three-strikes night
A three-strikes night runs through several racks, and nobody's strikes reset between them. The rack is just the supply of balls; the night is the rotation. Keeping a rack tight genuinely matters here — a loose rack breaks badly, fewer balls drop, and more people take strikes for reasons that have nothing to do with how they played.
The mistake people make
Re-racking with the same breaker instead of passing it to whoever is next in the rotation. That quietly hands the break — and its free shot — to the same person every time.
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.
- Break
- The opening shot that scatters the rack. The break is the first shot on a fresh rack.
- Dry break
- A break that pockets nothing. A dry break is a legal break shot that fails to pocket a single ball.
- 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.
- Spot
- The marked point a ball is returned to, and the act of returning it. The foot spot is the marked point where the apex ball of the rack sits.
Where it comes up
Rack 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.