Pool glossary
Strike
A missed turn. Three of them and you are out.
What it means
In three-strikes pool, a strike is what you collect when your turn ends without a ball going in a pocket. It is a life lost, not a penalty for doing something wrong — you can play a perfectly good shot, get a bad roll, and still take one.
Where the word comes from
Straight from baseball, where three strikes retire a batter. The UK name for the same game, Killer, counts the same thing as "lives" instead, which is why British players talk about losing a life and Americans talk about taking a strike.
How it sounds at a table
"That's two on Marcus." "I'm on two, I can't play safe here."
What it means in a three-strikes night
The strike is the whole scoring system. Everything else — the rotation, the rack, the break — exists to give people turns in which to take them. A player on two strikes plays completely differently from a player on none: they will fire at a low-percentage ball rather than play safe, because a safety that does not pocket anything still costs them the game.
The mistake people make
Thinking a foul and a strike are the same thing. In most houses a scratch costs a strike on top of the missed shot, so one bad stroke can cost two lives. Decide that before the first break, not after someone scratches.
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.
- Life
- The British name for a strike. Same thing, counted upward. A life is one of the chances you start a Killer game with — normally three.
- Scratch
- Pocketing the cue ball, or knocking it off the table. A scratch is the cue ball going down a pocket or leaving the table entirely.
- 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.
Where it comes up
Strike 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.