Bank pool scored only when the bank was the shot you called

Bank pool in the WPA rules effective 21 October 2026 is a race scored only by banks you announced. Two shapes of rack are in the facts. A nine-ball short rack is a race to five. A fifteen-ball full rack is a race to eight. The balls on the table change, and the winning number changes with them. Agree which race you racked. A player who thinks "first to eight" during a short rack is playing a longer game than the one on the cloth.

The score is still a bank either way. You do not get a cheaper point because the rack is short, and you do not get to ignore the call because fifteen balls make contact messy. The cue ball must hit the called ball first. A thinner hit on some other ball, followed by a beautiful bank of the one you named, is not the shot the call described. Contact comes before the cushion story.

Every scoring shot is a called bank, and the call has three parts in a fixed order of meaning. Name the object ball. Name the cushions in the order that ball will touch them. Name the pocket. Then shoot. The room can hear whether the path you get is the path you said. A one-rail bank into the corner is a different sentence from a two-rail bank into the side. Hitting the rails in the wrong order is a miss against the call, even if the ball eventually falls.

This is stricter than a game that only asks you to name a pocket. The cushion list is the skill the game is named for. Players who call "the three, somewhere" have not called a bank. Players who call the three, the long rail, then the side pocket, have. The paraphrase stays at that list. It does not add a time limit for how early you must speak, because the facts used here do not give one.

Six bank-pool checks

• Choose the race: nine-ball short rack to five, or fifteen-ball full rack to eight.
• Call the ball, the cushions in order, and the pocket on every scoring shot.
• Hit the called ball first with the cue ball.
• Spot extra balls. They do not score.
• Charge a foul as one point, and park a scratch behind the head string.
• Leave the game unstaked here. This site does not run bank pool for money.

Bank pool scores only a called bank. This site does not stake that race. The 8-ball payment table is 8 ball pool online.

The other rule cards are eight in one pocket, a called 10, and shot vocabulary. The group is the games of chance guides.

The match is the 8-ball table. A finished rack can be checked on the fairness page. Adults 18 and over only, and only where a stake is legal. Limits are on responsible gambling.

Bank pool does not pay you for company. If the called bank falls and another ball falls with it, the extra ball does not score. It is spotted. The point, if the called ball followed the called cushions into the called pocket and was struck first, is one point. The second ball is a mess you have to undo by putting it back. That rule stops a crowded short rack from turning one good bank into a two-point accident.

A foul costs one point on its own. You can lose ground without anyone banking anything. The combination is why a wild swing is expensive: you might spot an extra, give up a point, and hand the cue ball over. None of those outcomes is a hidden bonus. The only upward move in the facts used here is the bank you actually called, in a race to five or a race to eight.

A scratch sends the incoming player to ball in hand above the head string. The cue ball stays in the kitchen, as it does after a one-pocket scratch, and it does not roam the table the way a standard 9-ball foul allows. From the kitchen you still have to hit the called ball first if you intend to score, and you still have to have called the cushions. The foul that produced the scratch has already cost a point.

This site does not run bank pool for money. The race to five and the race to eight remain reading. The button on this site remains 8-ball.