Talk:Glossary of cue sports terms/Archive 1

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Contents 1 Split proposal 1.1 Comments 2 Cuegloss entries for discussion (resolved) 2.1 IMPORTANT: Update extant links if entry renamed! 2.2 "Cross rake" not a valid term 2.3 Doubles 2.4 Force-follow, force-draw 2.5 Gambling and other entries not billiards-specific 2.6 Inning 2.7 Long bank 2.8 Maximum ⇒ Maximum break 2.9 Scotch doubles 2.10 Skittle 2.11 Snooker 2.12 Down-trou

Split proposal

I propose that this article be split into Glossary of cue sports terms, for terms that pertain only to the game, its play, equipment, etc. (i.e. pool/carom/snooker jargon), and Hustling#Glossary, for terms that pertain to hustles and gambling (i.e. road hustler slang).

Some pro and con arguments I can think of are listed below, in a passage that anyone should feel free to refactor for accuracy/neutrality. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 19:22, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Pro

• Makes this glossary easier to source and ergo easier to fireproof against AfD, since it is easier to find sources for technical jargon, in the enormous pile of billiards rule books, magazines, and instructional manuals
• Makes this glossary more focused and unified, further proof against AfDing it incorrectly, as a supposedly unencyclopedic collection of alleged dicdefs.
• There really isn't anything particularly conceptually related between these types of terms; they just happen to coincidentally intersect at billiards. The terms in the main glossary would be sports terminology; those at Hustling would be grifting and gambling terminology.
• Some terms with multiple definitions (i.e. one for both contexts) can be split up, making referring to them with {{Cuegloss}} and {{Hustlegloss}} "cleaner" for the reader (the first and last definitions of fish and mark are good examples).
• It will reduce the increasingly unwieldy length of this glossary list
• It will add richness to the Hustling article, and give a place to expand on that, e.g. by adding entries for specific "named" hustles like "last two off" and "two brothers and a stranger", which might not really be appropriate at this glossary.
• It will allow the addition of more grifting/gambling terms to the list that would be at Hustling because they would be on-topic there, but are definitely not on topic here because they are not limited to cue sports

Con

• A few terms may need to be in both, because their "range" is ambiguous (the middle definitions of fish and mark are good examples)
• It may be hard for some editors to remember which glossary a particular term is in
• Editors who do not bother to read the glossary's lead may be unaware of the difference and add hustling terms back in
• It will take some work to hunt up all the relevant uses of {{Cuegloss}} and change them to {{Hustlegloss}}.

Comments

• Support, as nominator. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 19:22, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

First I'm not sure that this is in any danger of being afd'd, but as glossaries go, it fits more of the criteria that have been argued (by me and you especially) make a glossary more appropriate here than at Wiktionary—maybe more than any other glossary—lots of sources, really vastly multi-linked, both incoming and outgoing, to numerous article, etc. So I don't believe that that basis for splitting needs to be considered. Sourcing is also, I think, not relevant. Everything in here should be sourceable or removable on that basis. There may be some terms that can't be sourced. Once we reach the point that most terms have sources, we will have reached the point of removing the unsourceable. (Off topic but anticipating that future event, I would say we should then remove such entries to a holding place on this talk page as they are removed).

The main problem though is that I'm having trouble figuring out what you mean by "hustling terms"; what's within the purview of the proposed split? Looking through the article I don't easily see any that are specific to hustling. There are some that are generally gambling-specific, but not an apt fit under hustling. Hustling is a very specific activity. The only terms I can think of which might fit within the narrow scope or hustling are maybe defined names of dump schemes (none of which are in the article). Do you mean entries like "stakehorse"? If so, that does not work being pigeonholed as a hustling term. The word is used generically to mean a backer for gambling. No hustling need be involved or is implied when the term is used. Other examples (and I think I'm going for some of the obvious ones here, and can't find many of those), dump and sandbag, are used all the time when no hustling per se is involved. In the APA, for instance, teams will often sandbag, but one wouldn't think of that as hustling at all because there's no hustler involved. Hmmm, I guess on the lemon is pretty hustling specific--unlike dump and sandbag, almost always used to describe a hustler plying his trade. That's one. What others are there?--Fuhghettaboutit 14:54, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

I was referring to all of the gambling-related entries: One definition of "action", both of the "lemon" entries, "dump", "stakehorse", "sandbag", "mark" (1 sense), "fish" (1 sense), etc. The problem as I see it, especially for terms like the latter five, is that they aren't actually cue-specific terms at all (even if originating in this field), but are as you put it "generally gambling-specific", or in some cases generally con-specific, so they should come out of here. On the other hand, a glossary at Hustling (which would include very specifically pool-hustling terms of course), which was less narrowly-defined than this one, would almost certainly include such terms, and there does not appear to be any other place to put them (Glossary of gambling terms, Glossary of confidence trick terms, etc.) It's not a destructive proposal, but a reorganizational one. I think that eventually the Hustling article can be quite rich, because of all of the available material, so I don't have any fear of it the material being lost through AfD at that article either. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:24, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Some are more general gambling terms though more related to pool than any other sport, but many others are pool world only. On the lemon, lemonade stroke, gapper, go off, have the nuts, these are all, as for as I know, only pool world expressions. Then take a word like heart. It is used in other places occasionally, at poker and in other gambling contexts, but it's a term used in every other sentence in a pool room. It's so ubiquitous in the pool world that you'll see it often in Billiards Digest, etc. It's far more a part of the culture than anywhere else and it wouldn't make sense to take it out (on the other hand, there's no reason whatever it couldn't exist both here and in a gambling glossary). Many of the terms are like this. I just scanned the whole glossary and, even under a liberal construction, there are only about 15 terms in the whole article that are gambling terms that aren't manifestly only pool related (i.e., I'm not counting "lemonade stroke" or the orange crush or games on the wire for obvious reasons) and of that small number, a much smaller subset are just general gambling terms. So I'm opposed. I see no reason or utility in removing a tiny group of terms that are constantly in use in the pool world. They should just be duplicated if needed somewhere else and the word split isn't really apt given the small number. Moreover, quite a few of these, if they were in a general gambling glossary, would need to be qualified as "especially in pool"; That screams for them to have an entry here.--Fuhghettaboutit 05:10, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Okay. I can see some of that (while also pointing out that Hustling is about pool, with minor mention that some of its concepts have been borrowed by things like White Men Can't Jump, so the "would need to be qualified" would probably not really apply). I still think a split would be helpful to both articles eventually, if done correctly, and I may raise the issue again next year or something, but if the two main editors of these articles aren't in agreement, and no one else is commenting, then we have a clear case of no consensus.  :-) On a side note, I strongly suspect that the Hustling article will need to split eventually, because it is mostly about pool, but there is reliable evidence that hustling culture exists elsewhere, in a related but distinct fashion, in street basketball, poker, etc. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 09:27, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Cuegloss entries for discussion (resolved)

IMPORTANT: Update extant links if entry renamed!

It is very important that if you change an existing entry's name that you update any links to it that are already in articles. These can be found by searching for "{{Cuegloss|ORIGINAL TERM", and "[[Glossary of cue sports terms#ORIGINAL TERM". — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:36, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I've already done this with the recent change of Stake/stakehorse to Stake. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:36, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

---

"Cross rake" not a valid term

And just remove "cross rake"; we don't use cross rests in American pool/carom/etc., and the British usage is simply "cross" or rarely "cross rest". I.e. the term "cross rake" is simply bogus. "Cross rest" doesn't really need to be in there either; people will find either "cross" because they simply went there first, or they'll find "rest" first because they saw "cross rest" used in prose and tried rest first (or second, after not finding "cross rest"); getting to "cross" eventually is intuitively obvious. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:58, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Doubles

A form of team play in which two players compete against another team of two players in any given frame or match.

• Isn't this just a general sports/gaming term? — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:57, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
• This is more general than the term "Scotch doubles", but per the entries for "match", "game", "frame", "round" and "inning", the exact meaning in the cue sports context may be unique enough to support an entry. I think it would need to be differenced from "Scotch doubles" better, something like, "A form of team play in which two players compete against another team of two players in any given frame or match. In a doubles game, the first player from the breaking team is the only one who shoots during the opening inning, with control of the table passing to a member of the opposing team at the end of that inning, then upon the end of the opponent's inning to the doubles partner of the original player, and next to the second opponent, play proceeding in this doubly-alternating manner until concluded. Contrast Scotch doubles." — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 19:32, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Adding unopposed explanatory version to glossary. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 19:36, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Force-follow, force-draw

I had added the terms force-follow, and force draw, which are extremes of the respective english applied to the cue. It is very important not to just cowboy edits to a page...research it firt to see if it is a true term first.[1] [--anon.]

Gambling and other entries not billiards-specific

This is already admissibly a huge article, but informative, and I wouldn't have it any other way. However I do think there are several entries that don't need to be here. I'm talking about the entries that aren't cue sport-specific, especially (but not exclusively) all the gambling-oriented ones, that I hear all the time in affiliation to loads of sports, not just pool and snooker. I'm talking about the following: action; business; chasing one's money; choke; freeze up; fundamentals; game (for which a similar explanatory non-specificity is given); gapper; go off; green (sense 4); handicapping (why present participle by the way?); heart; let out; mark; round; rubber match; seeding; session; stake; sweaters.

Just my thoughts. Kris 00:11, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Meh. Many of the gambling ones originated with billiards. Action and green are needed in the generic but relevant senses (gambling, money, respectively), concisely, because they disambiguate the other billiards-related uses that are billiards-specific (sidespin, cloth, respectively). If we leave them out, the glossary will be telling people that "I've got a lot of green on this game of nine-ball" means "I've got a lot of cloth on this game of nine-ball", which isn't acceptable. Some terms like choke and stake(horse) may be used in other contexts and may (or may not) even originate outside the game, but they are not everyday terms, and are used so frequently in this context that they probably need to remain here (as opposed to, say, "bet"; it's common in the context but everyone knows what that means. Fundamentals (the entry for which may be deficient in this regard), handicap (yes it should be renamed), round, and game are not defined here in their general sense (other than to DAB from the other meanings also given in their entries), but rather in their billiards-specific narrower senses. And so on.

I think they need to be examined on a case-by-case basis. I would be opposed to adding even-more-general terms. The list of questionable ones is pretty short, and I think most of them are here for plausible reasons (but not unquestionable ones).

— SMcCandlish [talk][cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:44, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree entirely. How could we have a billiards glossary, for example, without action? It may be used in other contexts to refer to gambling but it actually has a more nunanced and broad usage in pool culture. Fundamentals is even more specific to pool culture. It has a very specific meaning that every pool player (at least in the northeast US knows, though pool magazines use it in the same way so I think it's not limited to this region). While it shares a vernacular underpinning with its usage in other contexts ("he needs to work on his fundamentals if he wants to get better at Tennis") in pool it is not used just as a descriptive word but as a defined thing; it is cue-sport specific--Fuhghettaboutit 06:30, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I disagree partially. Maybe certain gambling terms and terms commonly used elsewhere but defined within pool-hall use parameters do have their place, if they're so common in American pool halls – that must be another geographic thing. In which case perhaps some annotation explaining as such would be appropriate for these entries. I really don't agree with the disambiguation argument for entries such as green (money). Are you saying we should also define it as a colour, a term for a lack of experience, etc.? So if someone says "Snooker tables are normally green," or "As far as competitive pool experience goes, I'm pretty green," people don't get 'confused' that they're saying "Snooker tables are cloth," or "...I'm pretty cloth"? The inherent essence of that argument states the very fact many entries have more than one definition would lead to confusion in the same way. There should be a certain amount of trust in people not to be so stupid, without having to cover all generic definitions for things that happen to get mentioned in pool halls as well as many other places. Admittedly, "green" is probably the only sense that does this at the moment, but it sets the precedent for a potentially endless number of similar disambiguating senses. Kris 18:55, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I understand your concern, but would argue that green in particular is special case, and the fact that it is the only one (at least the only one either of us can think of) after all this time suggests that no one is treating it as a precendent for silliness. "Green" is used in both senses frequently in (American - non-US money is usually not green) pool, and is even behind the title of The Color of Money, the most popular pool movie of all time (it is a ref. to both the currency and the color of the cloth). I.e., it's just a weird case. The film (and underlying book) are in essence a WP:RS that the entry belongs here. That said, I'm not going to cry like a big baby if it's deleted, I just think it's actually worth keeping in this unique instance, and would almost certainly argue against superficially similar but less important and unusual entries being added, e.g. adding entries for "flirting and the pursuit of sex" and "fighting" under "Action", even though pool halls are pretty noteworthy for both, and the term is certainly often used to mean either in one context or another. :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:58, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Ha ha, I've got to spend a week or two on a pool playing holiday in the US I think. OK then we'll let this one stay in. Kris 22:45, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, the "upscale billiards parlors" are basically just singles bars with pool tables. The saddest one I've seen was the Hollywood Billiards in San Francisco (I think it was formerly associated with the original in Hollywood, but hasn't been for years). Full of gorgeous turn-of-the-last-century Brunswick antique tables, including some ten-footers. I went in there one day and half of them were gone, to make room for a dance floor. I think I cried. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:42, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Inning

Five-pins exception: I'd argue to restore that. It does no harm, we make all sorts of game-specific comments throughout the glossary, the exception is unusual (thus noteworthy) and the actual UMB rules use the term "inning" so the Cuegloss link from that article to this entry will be confusing. It could be genericized though; there are a few other games that use the one-shot-per-inning rule, such as killer (with the exception of the break inning, which may be either 1 or 2 shots). — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 20:55, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Can you make it a little less of a solo exception, implying it's the only one and more of an example? It also struck me as odd because it's not exactly an exception. The prior sentence says usually ending in... so it didn't feel right. Maybe something along the lines of: "However, in some games, such as five-pins and _____, players' turns at the table are always limited to one inning, regardless of the intent and result of shots made."--Fuhghettaboutit 21:38, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Done. But I think the overall definition may be wrong, since it say it is a player's turn at the table, when I think it is really all players' turns at the table. That is, a match consists of all rounds consists of all games/frames consists of all innings, consists of all turns/visits. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)›

Long bank

A #Cross-corner bank shot from one end of the table to the other (i.e. across the #Center string). Long banks are considerably more difficult, because of the smaller margin for error due to distance and angle widening, than short cross-corner and #Cross-side banks from the end of the table. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:33, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Maximum ⇒ Maximum break

The vast majority of snooker articles use the full term. Propose changing:

===Maximum===
(text here)

to:

===Maximum break===
''Also simply '''maximum'''.'''(text here)

— SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 23:03, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Scotch doubles

A form of doubles play in which the two team members take it in turns throughout the frame to play alternate shots during an inning.

• Again, I think this is just general sports terminology for any game in which play can alternate like that, isn't it? I wonder if there is already an article under one name or another that covers doubles and Scotch doubles more generally? — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:57, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
• Actually, every single use of this term on WP is in reference to cue sports, and the first several pages of Google hits are also, or refer to bowling. Not sure which sport created the term, but it is not so broadly used as I thought, so it would make a good entry. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 19:19, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Adding to glossary, with explanatory expansion; unopposed for nearly a month. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 19:54, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Skittle

As used in Five-pins, et al. Well sourced there, even with date of first known usage. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 17:44, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

NB: A conforming (and disambiguating) entry for Pin was also required. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:30, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Snooker

This entry probably needs to also explain the phrase "snookers required" ("he required a snooker", etc); several articles use this, but I don't think any of the snooker articles anywhere actually explain what it means. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:58, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Forgive me if I'm missing the point here but the phrase is defined under its own title in this glossary, I added it a while ago. Maybe an internal link could be included within the snooker entry. Kris 09:37, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I simply didn't see it! — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:07, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Down-trou

See Eight-ball, under Australian and NZ variants. Source:^[1] The text at eight-ball can probably just be copypasted to make the entry. Any objections? — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 19:27, 27 July 2007 (UTC)