Pool glossary
Run out
Clearing everything you need without missing.
What it means
To run out is to pocket every remaining ball you need in a single visit to the table. In eight-ball it means your group plus the 8; in nine-ball, everything up to the 9.
Where the word comes from
From running the table. The highest compliment available in pool.
How it sounds at a table
"He ran out from the break." "On a bar box, that's not that rare."
What it means in a three-strikes night
Impossible in the default ruleset, which is the point — one shot a turn means nobody can run anything. If you play the "keep shooting until you miss" variant, run-outs become possible and the whole character of the night changes: strong players clear half a rack while everyone else watches, and the field thins unevenly. That variant is worth knowing about so you can decide against it on purpose.
The mistake people make
Adopting the keep-shooting variant to make the game "more like real pool" and then wondering why the same two people win every week.
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.
- Safety
- A shot played to leave your opponent with nothing. A safety is a deliberate defensive stroke: rather than trying to pocket a ball, you aim to leave the cue ball somewhere your opponent cannot do anything useful from.
- Break
- The opening shot that scatters the rack. The break is the first shot on a fresh rack.
Where it comes up
Run out 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.