How to keep track of whose turn it is in a pool tournament

The whiteboard

Names down the left, tally marks next to them, a finger moving down the list. It is the incumbent and there is nothing wrong with it in principle.

What it costs: somebody has to own it all night and stand near it. The order is whatever order the names were written in, which is not a draw. Tally marks get smudged by sleeves. And when a question comes up — "I had two, not three" — there is no record of what happened, only what the board currently says.

Use it when: you have under ten people and somebody is happy to own it.

Paper

A printed grid with names down one side and boxes for strikes. Better than a whiteboard because it survives the night and you can keep it.

What it costs: the same attention, plus it is hard to read across a room, so people still ask whose turn it is.

Use it when: you want a record, or as a backup. We have a printable sheet for exactly this.

A phone

One person holds the night on a phone. The order is drawn properly, strikes are counted automatically, and nobody is doing arithmetic.

What it costs: everybody has to ask that one person whose turn it is, which is the same bottleneck as the whiteboard with a smaller screen. And most apps need a connection, which the back room does not have.

Use it when: the app works offline and you can prop it where people can see it.

A screen

The order on something the whole room can read: a TV, a tablet behind the bar, a laptop on a stool. Nobody asks whose turn it is, because it says so, in letters six inches high.

What it costs: a screen and somewhere to put it. That is the whole cost, and it is the single biggest improvement available to a busy night — ten to fifteen seconds a shot, across four hundred shots.

Use it when: you have more than a dozen people. Below that, a propped-up phone does the same job.

What actually matters, whatever you use

• The next player must be visible, not just the current one.
• Strike counts must be checkable without asking. This is why a QR code on the table is worth more than it sounds — players check themselves.
• Mistakes must be fixable. Whatever you use, somebody will record a strike against the wrong person. A method with no undo is a method with arguments.