Cutthroat pool for three players, without a fake official card

Cutthroat is a three-player bar game, and it sits outside the WPA chapter this cluster cites for 8-ball, 9-ball, and 10-ball. Each player receives five balls. One player takes 1 through 5, the next takes 6 through 10, and the third takes 11 through 15. You shoot the other players' balls. Your own five are the set you hope to keep on the cloth. The common winning picture is the last player who still has a ball left.

That picture is widely played. It is not a single official rulebook, and this page will not pretend a PDF invented one. Houses differ on the break, on whether you may strike your own ball first, and on the cost of a scratch. Those differences stay open on purpose. The WPA links on this page document the numbered games. They are not a footnote that turns cutthroat into a WPA event. If the room hands you a written card, the card outranks a web summary.

Cutthroat is three players and five balls each. This table is two players and groups. The money version of the two-player game is 8 ball pool online.

The other rule cards are lives, not groups and two-player 8-ball. 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.

The play is a hunt for other people's balls. Every ball you pocket from an opponent's five brings that opponent closer to having nothing left. When two sets are gone, the player who still has a ball wins under the common pattern. While all three sets remain, the table is a small war of five-ball groups rather than a two-player race. Some rooms let you pocket your own ball and treat it as a wound. Some rooms forbid the hit.

This page lists both habits as things rooms do, and it refuses to pick a winner between them. That is enough traffic to describe the common pattern in plain words. It is not enough traffic to justify a fictional governing body. Three players, five balls each, shoot the others, last ball left wins. Past that sentence, ask the house.

Six cutthroat checks

• Give each player five balls: 1–5, 6–10, and 11–15.
• Shoot the other players' balls under the common pattern.
• Treat the last player with a ball left as the usual winner.
• Ask the house what a scratch costs before you need the answer.
• Do not cite the WPA PDF as the cutthroat rulebook.
• Do not look for a cutthroat stake on this site. It is not offered.

A tidy article is tempted to fill every gap with a confident penalty. It might declare that a scratch spots one of your balls, or that the breaker must touch both opponents, or that the 8 belongs to nobody. Each of those lines would be an invention. Exact house rules vary. There is no single official rulebook on this page the way there is a WPA paraphrase for the rotation games. Leaving the gap is the accurate choice.

What you can settle before the break is short and useful. Ask who owns 1 through 5, what happens if your own ball falls, and what the cue ball falling costs. If money or pride is involved, write the answers where everyone can see them. After the balls stop, memory favours the speaker who is about to lose a ball. The common pattern is enough to start a friendly rack. It is a poor judge of a dispute nobody named in advance.

This site does not stake cutthroat. The lobby is a two-player 8-ball match. A three-handed group game has no button beside that match. Killer is absent too, and so are 9-ball, 10-ball, straight pool, one-pocket, and bank. A searcher who wanted a cash cutthroat app will not find a hidden rake on this page. Inventing another company's fee would be the same kind of fake as inventing an official cutthroat book.

Read the five-ball pattern. Play it where three people agree on the gaps. Do not expect the 8-ball cashier to score groups of 1 through 5. Two friends and a stranger can still play the pattern on a bar table without this website being part of the stake. If they want a recorded pot, they need a room that actually books three players. This one books two, and only at 8-ball. The pattern can be read here. The pot cannot be posted here.