Pool glossary
Safety
A shot played to leave your opponent with nothing.
What it means
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. In most games it is a legitimate and skilful part of play.
Where the word comes from
From "playing safe" — a term shared with snooker, where it is an art form.
How it sounds at a table
"Safety." "You're not even going to try for it?" "Nope."
What it means in a three-strikes night
Here is where three strikes differs from almost every other pool game: a safety is usually a losing move. Your turn is one shot, and a shot that does not pocket anything is a strike regardless of how clever it was. That single consequence is what makes the format work in a bar — nobody can grind, everybody has to go for it, and the night keeps moving.
The mistake people make
Letting the last two players trade safeties at the end of a night. If they do, put a shot clock on it or rule that a shot with no attempt to pocket counts as a miss. Watching two people roll a ball up and down a rail for twenty minutes empties a room.
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.
- 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.
- Foul
- Any illegal stroke. A foul is a stroke that breaks a rule: scratching, failing to hit the correct ball first, no ball reaching a cushion after contact, touching a ball with anything but the cue tip, or shooting out of turn..
- 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.
- Kick
- The cue ball off a cushion first. A kick shot sends the cue ball into a cushion before it contacts the object ball.
Where it comes up
Safety 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.