Talk:Kelly pool

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A fact from Kelly pool appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on 25 February 2007.
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[edit] Clarification and questions on pea pool rules

I just enjoyed a day of Pea Pool with several cousins. We adopted the "behind the line scratch rules" for a true pocket scratch, and "ball in hand" scratch (anywhere on the table) for failing to make contact with a target ball (like 9 ball). Information on Pea (Kelly) pool rules is scarce on the internet. Does anyone know for sure what the proper scratch rule is?

Also, why is there a pea (pill) numbered 16? We just didn't include this in the game, as nobody was sure, and again an internet search was not fruitful.

The previous unsigned comment was posted by Edjanx (talk · contribs), 14:45, 16 December 2007 (UTC).

According to the BCA rulebook, if the cue ball is scratched into a pocket or knocked off the table, incoming player has ball-in-hand behind the head string. On any other foul, the incoming player can either accept the table as it lies, or force the fouling player to shoot again (if they had ball-in-hand in the kitchen, they get it in-hand again. The rules state "if cue ball is in hand behind the string, it is so for either player"; this appears to mean that if fouling player had ball in hand, and incoming player elects to take the shot, that player ALSO gets ball in hand, with everything else remaining as it was, but this isn't entirely clear; the BCA can be very obtuse at times.) At any rate, there is no general ball-in-hand-anywhere-on-the-table rule in Kelly pool.
The pills have been used with other games and for other purposes, so presumably the 16 pea was used for something at some point.
— SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 12:02, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
I say this not from an actual source but from deduction issuing from the the common use of pills. More than any other purpose, peas are used to assign random player slots in tournaments. Standard tournaments (single and double elimination) require the use of multiples of eight slots for their efficient administration; that is, the charts for tournaments are for: 8 players; for 16 players; 32; 64; and 128. It stands to reason, then, that it would make little sense to have a pill set that only included fifteen pills, when all such player assignments can be done using a sixteen pill set, that would be a baffling task with just fifteen.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 18:14, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
Yep, that makes big sense. Esp. given that pills come in different colored sets (red, yellow, black, etc.) you could in most pill bottles fit 2 sets of pills to draw lots for placement in a 32-player bracket. For the tournament I run, I use playing cards, since they fit in my document-case-clipboard. If I used a bag instead, I'd probably use the pill bottle since it is kind of fun and it is nice to put the thing to use for other than taking pictures for the kelly pool article. :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 15:25, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Playing cards seems like a good way to go and just so you know, they are perfect for shimming slate. After I wrote this I tried to get some people interested in playing the game, just as a change; I got cross-eyed looks and they went back to passing the same crumpled $5 bill back and forth playing nine ball. Very frustrating.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:04, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
If I'm ever in your area or vice versa, you're on! — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:34, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] GA on hold

A nice, tight little article and I wouldn't withold a pass on length. However, there are a few issues I'll raise below:

  • Make sure there is consistency. Decide whether to have a hyphen between number and ball (e.g. 8-ball or 8 ball) and stick to it.
    • We have three here: the idiom, the name of the game and the name of the ball. According to WP:CUESPELL, which I think makes a lot of sense, the ball is the 8 ball and the game is eight-ball. This is done for internal Wikipedia consistency as sources are all over the map. As for the idiom, it is usually spelled out "behind the eight ball." I only found one inconsistency which I fixed. Please tell me if you see any more.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:29, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
      • The other was a 3-ball in the corner pocket set up section. Casliber (talk · contribs) 19:40, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
  • There is no history section. In reading the article I have no idea where or when the game developed, though it seems to be before 1900. This is necessary I'd have thought.
  • I wouldn't have the Behind the eight ball section up top. It is less central to the article than the gameplay section surely. I'd put it below them, and even consider it a subsection of a history section.
  • The lead should be a summary of salient points in the article and hence all material within it should be expanded later in the article. The gameplay section sorta launches into things without talking about how many people play etc. This bit The game accommodates players of a wide range of skill levels and is designed for group play, having a 2 player minimum, but being best suited for between 4 and 6 participants and able to host 15 players in all. - from lead needs to be duplicated and/or expanded within it.
  • Similarly, alternate names should be in a short etymology section at the top of the article.
  • and the person whose private number was pocketed is assessed a penalty of one point -erm, why not simply "penalised one point" ?

Let me know how you go. Casliber (talk · contribs) 11:43, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

I am withdrawing the article nomination because, though the minor fixes you suggested have been made, none of your substantive concerns are going to be satisfied.
Regarding a history section, you're preaching to the choir. That's the place I would have started this article if I could have. I wasn't joking when I said I exhausted every source I could find on the nominations page. I have just looked again. There's nothing in the Encyclopedia of Pool and Billiards or the BCA's Official Rules on the game's origin or invention, nor anything in any of my other pool and billiard books, nor anything I can find through Google books, and I have really milked everything those sources have on the game. I have said in other articles something like "the date of invention and history are not well know...", but only when a source says that. It's original research otherwise. Maybe this article really can't be a good article because of that lack, but I can't fix it until such time as a new source presents itself.
Regarding an etymology section: it is standard to mention alternate names of a subject directly after the first mention (see Wikipedia:Layout#First paragraph). Etymology is a subject dear to me and is about describing the derivation of words and names. I have no information on the etymology of the name of the game or its alternates, and actually searched for this when I was writing it, because I figured there has to be a reason, a person, an association behind Kelly/Killy/Kelly; I found... bupkis.
Regarding the behind the eight ball section: As you intimate, it functions, for lack of a better alternative, as part of the history, which we are agreed would precede the prosaics of the game's play and rules. More to the point, I feel it is a matter of weight. True, the name of this article is kelly pool and kelly pool is the overarching subject. Nevertheless, while I can't see moving this article to "behind the eight ball," when we consider importance and weight, detailing the origin of behind the eight ball is more momentous than the description of the game itself. Kelly pool is a rather obscure game. Behind the eight ball, by contrast, is an extremely common expression, far more famous than this game the play of which resulted in the expression. If nothing comes out of this article but informing people of the origin of the expression, I think that is the article's best legacy (to speak grandiosely), and it's more likely to make this game well known by association with that dominant topic than the other way around.
As to the lead, I am thinking about how to modify it, though I must say that I feel the instructions for leads gets it right for articles of any length but it doesn't work well for articles such as this. Having a lead that purely summarizes material later in the article for an article of this length, and in which the material mentioned in the lead that is not duplicated later in the article cannot be expanded upon because that's all there, is a redundant exercise that doesn't follow the way we read and take in information; it's like having a dramatic personae section before a short story with two characters.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:39, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
A mystery...I am amazed there are no sources which talk about its history (?!). This is a real mystery and my interest is piqued. I hate to say it but it really needs it. Look, give me a heads up if you find anything and I'll have a look myslef. Casliber (talk · contribs) 07:41, 24 February 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Casliber (talk • contribs)
By all means, and good luck! But I'm not going to holding my breath. The New York Times has nothing, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle has nothing, and our premier billiard's historian, Shamos, doesn't mention any history in his premier encyclopedia, which leads me to believe he couldn't find much. It's also unfortunately not uncommon to find that the exact origin of much better known billiards games is not well detailed. Look at the history section of eight ball which I wrote; you'll see while there's some history but the exact date of invention is unknown. Or take a look at three cushion billiards and see how tentative, straight out of sources, the origins are. At least there, though, I was able to detail the fact that the history is not well known; here I can't even find mention.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:37, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
I have to agree with everything that Fuhghettaboutit has said here. In particular it is simply lost to the mists of time, in most cases, the exact origins of a game or sport. GA candidates on sports and games have to be evaluated on that basis, not compared to things like when a specific radioactive element was discovered or when a Persian king ruled and what happened under his reign. If no one wrote it down, then there is no history for Wikipedia to report on. I also have to concur with the idea that the lead on a short, concise article should not be a rehash of the entire article; this is simply boring for the reader, and somewhat intelligence-insulting. If GA reviewers genuinely will have a problem with the lead as it stands, I would recommend simply moving material out of it into the main body of the article, and having a shorter lead (and it could be made a little more summary-ish by mentioning the "behind the eight ball" derivation in the lead, without getting into details). Lastly, I generally concur that alternative names should go in the lead, but this is questionably the case when those names are obscure, and are presented for completeness, not because someone will likely be looking for them. I "enforced" the always-in-the-lead principle at the carrom article and a few others, and in retrospect I think that the result is ugly and reader-annoying.
At any rate, this article is certainly an A-class article by the standards of WP:SPORTS, whether or not WP:GA can encompass an article on something for which historical sources simply do not appear to exist.
— SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:11, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
PS: I have also created a Talk:Kelly pool/Comments page, though the WP:SPORTS template isn't "smart" enough yet to link to it yet. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:39, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

[outdent] I agree with you about lead in short articles being a bit repetitive. May be worth looking in MOS or at least identifying the problem there. I tweaked it a bit. You mean you can't even reference a line "The origins of the game (and the name) are obscure" ? Wow....Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:22, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

That's not surprising; if Shamos, and Stein & Rubino, and any other well-researched billiards reference works, do not actually come out and say "the origins of the game are obscure", in one phrasing or another, then we're not really in a position to say this ourselves. Or at least this argument can be made. Another argument can be made that the fact that the major references on this topic provide no information about the game's origin means that it must be obscure - basic logic is not original research. I think it would be up to a broader discussion whether or not to leave the article as-is, or include a statement that the origins are obscure, with a ref footnote briefly elucidating the efforts made to find sources about the game's origin. PS: The origins of the game may in fact not be obscure, ultimately. Someone may have researched it down to the day and place it was invented; but this research may be in an unpublished manuscript, an issue of a pool magazine from 1961 that not even a library has on file, or a book published in a quantity of 200 in 1892, only one copy of which survives, in a private library in Sweden. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:28, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
PS: I have raised the lead issue at WT:LEAD. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:46, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the support Stanton. I really feel it would be original research to say anything about the origins of the game being unknown without a source saying so. I'm mixed on the issue of whether an article that doesn't include standard encyclopedic information because it doesn't seem to be available to write from can be a GA or FA. Another words, maybe this shouldn't be a GA if we can't write a history. To reduce this to a logical absurdity for effect, there could be a subject for which there a multiple sources which all say the same and from that material only one sourceable sentence is possible. So you write a one sentence stub, but damn is it a nice sentence! Can that sentence be a FAC or a GA? Of course not. Okay, but what about this other subject which has two paragraphs? Okay, how about four? You see where this is going. There has to be, over an above good prose, good sources, etc., some information content minimum in order to say some subject has the ability to get listed as a good article.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:11, 28 February 2008 (UTC)