Talk:Three-ball

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[edit] Merging in draft article with the current one

Interested in folks' thoughts on merging in my draft (and rather more comprehensive) article on the topic into this very short one that someone put up while I was still drafting. The current article has a few points mine misses. Overall, I think a merged version would be a vastly better article. My draft article is at User:SMcCandlish/Three-ball. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 22:18, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

I guess I'll take silence as assent, and start working on the merge. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 19:11, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] VPHQ not a good source

PS: I do not feel that Virtual Pool HQ is a good enough source to quote on three-ball rules (as is the case with the current article), as their rules reflect programmer's decisions and the way their pool software works (e.g., requiring a certain number of the balls to touch a rail after the break), not how the game is actually played in real life, or even what makes logical sense. More to the point, a break so soft that balls did not reach rails would be a mistake in three-ball, one that only penalized the player "at bat". The breaking key to three-ball is to break as hard as possible and get as much motion out of the balls, maximizing their chance of being pocketed on the break! Ergo, a rule making a weak break a foul in three-ball makes no sense at all, and was clearly "imported" willy-nilly by the people at VPHQ from nine-ball, because their software was designed with nine-ball in mind. My draft article variant doesn't have any authoritative sources to quote on what the typical rules are (so far), but the current citation to VPHQ defies reason. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 22:28, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Found other sources to cite in addition to VPHQ, which remains useful to cite on certain points. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 22:51, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Additional rules

Please do not add any more rules/variants (especially any "they play it like this at my favorite bar" variations!) unless you have a citeable source for the additional fact(s). Three-ball is already poorly documented enough as it is! Please DO find and add additional source citations, especially to facts that have no citations yet, but also to facts that already have some citations and could use the support of additional ones. Please do this with any eye to preserving what little consensus has been arrived at by examining all of the extant rulesets so far (i.e. don't change the game to a non-rotation-play game just because you find one source that says it's turn-based like eight-ball; instead add that citation to the paragraph that already discribes this uncommon variant. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 23:29, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please review: Consensus and consistency needed on spelling to prevent ambiguity & confusion

Especially for nine-ball but also for eight-ball, one-pocket, and even snooker, etc., I firmly think we need to come to, and as editors enforce in article texts, a consensus on spelling conventions and implement it consistently throughout all of the cue sports Wikepedia articles. I advocate (and herein attempt to justify) a system of standardized spellings, based on 1) general grammar rules; 2) basic logic; and 3) disambiguation.

This is a draft submission to the active editor community of billiards-related articles on Wikipedia. It is intended to ultimately end up being something like "[[Wikipedia:[something:]Billiards/Spelling guidelines]]", or part of an official Wikipedia cue sports article-shepherding Project, likely it's first documentation output.

Anyway, please help me think this through. The point is not for me to become world famous™ for having finally codified billiards terms and united the entire English-speaking world in using them (hurrah). I simply want the articles here on pool and related games to be very consistent in application of some new consensus Wikipedia editing standards about spelling/phrasing of easily confusable billards terms that may be ambiguous to many readers in the absence of that standard.

Compare:

  1. "While 9-ball is a 9-ball game, the 9-ball is the real target; pocket it in a 9-ball run if you have to, but earlier is better." (Huh?)
  2. "While nine-ball is a nine ball game, the 9 ball is the real target; pocket it in a nine ball run if you have to, but earlier is better." (Oh, right!)

That's the super-simple "use case" I make for this proposed nomenclature. If you think that the differentiation didn't cut it please TELL ME, and say how you would improve it.

So, here's the article draft so far (please do not edit it directly! Post on its Discussion page instead; thanks.): User:SMcCandlish/Pool_terms

(PS: This intro text is repeated at the top of it.) — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 05:34, 16 November 2006 (UTC)