9-Ball (beta)

9-Ball is in beta. It is playable today and marked BETA in the app because it is still being developed — rules, screens and graphics may change between updates.

9-Ball is a refereed match. Play the ghost on your own or a friend at your table: the camera watches every shot, keeps the score and the shot log, and knows whose turn it is. Anything it gets wrong, you can fix. 8-Ball, 10-Ball and Straight Pool play on the same game screen and work the same way.

Setting up a match

Open 9-BALL on the Games page and press PLAY for you against the ghost, or LOCAL MULTI for two players at one table. The settings open first:

• Rules — a preset, and every rule under it starts there and can be changed:
  • Pro (Matchroom): winner breaks from the break box, three-ball rule, push out, three fouls lose the rack, a 30-second shot clock, race to 9.
  • WPA (world rules): alternate breaks from the kitchen, three-ball rule, push out, three fouls lose the rack, no clock, race to 9.
  • Casual (bar 9-ball): alternate breaks, no push out, no three-ball or three-foul rule, no clock, race to 5.
• Race to — racks to win the match.
• Ghost (playing alone) — You: you shoot both sides and every rule applies. Classic: the ghost never misses — break and run out, or the rack is the ghost's.
• Break — Winner breaks or Alternate, from the Break box or the Kitchen.
• Camera fouls — whether the camera calls a wrong ball first: Ask me (it suggests the foul and you tap Foul or No foul), Auto (it calls the ones it's sure of) or Off.
• The switches under the rack: Push out, Three-ball rule, Three fouls lose the rack, 9 on the break wins, Shot clock (30 s) and Allow run-out advice.

How a game works

1. Rack. The game screen says RACK THE BALLS. Rack them, put the cue ball down and press READY TO BREAK. Shot tracking starts when the cue ball moves.
2. Play. The cards show each player's racks, whose turn it is and the balls they've made this rack; the line under them says what happens next (GARY TO SHOOT, GHOST · BALL IN HAND). Every shot goes into the shot log with what went in.
3. Ball in hand. After a foul, place the cue ball and press BALL PLACED. Nothing is tracked until you do, so you can move it around as much as you like.
4. The rack. A legal 9 wins it — combos and caroms included. The rack's result comes up with a breakdown of both players (balls in, pot success, fouls, break-and-runs, best run); close it, rack again and press READY TO BREAK.

The match ends when someone reaches the race.

What the camera calls, and what you call

The camera calls balls in and scratches, and a golden break. Each call can be undone: UNDO takes back the last shot, and 9 IS STILL ON THE TABLE reverses a golden break that wasn't.

You call the rest. The camera can't judge everything a referee does — whether the lowest ball was hit first, whether a ball reached a rail — so the game never enforces those on its own:

• FOUL, after every shot, opens the list of fouls for that kind of shot (the break, a push out, a normal shot). Pick one and the turn and ball in hand follow from it. NOT A FOUL clears one.
• The break is never judged automatically: if it was illegal (no ball in and too few to a rail, or the three-ball rule not met), mark it.
• Wrong ball first follows your Camera fouls setting.

Push out. After the break, press PUSH OUT before the shot. The other player then chooses SHOOT IT or GIVE IT BACK on the game screen.

Three fouls. A player on two fouls is marked ON TWO FOULS; a third in a row loses the rack (when the rule is on).

Fixing a call

Every shot in the log can be changed, as long as it's in the rack being played. Click a shot to open it:

• Balls in comes first — a ball the camera counted that's Still on the table, or one that Went in too.
• The fouls for that shot, or No foul.
• Or Remove shot altogether.

The match replays from the log, so the score, the turn, ball in hand and the rack's breakdown all follow the fix.

Balls the camera can't read. Ball numbers are checked after the break, not in the rack (a tight rack can't be read). If the camera can't read a ball or can't find one, the shot row says so — CAN'T READ A BALL · FIX or CAN'T FIND THE 3 · FIX. FIX opens the table: tap a ball to give it its number, or tell the game a ball is still on the table or gone.

Run-out advice

With Allow run-out advice on, SHOW RUN-OUT appears beside the shot controls. It's the same shot planner as Instant Recall's "show me the run-out": it plans the rack from where the balls are, in rotation, and projects the next shot's cue-ball path onto the table. The game screen shows the stroke — the cue ball with the spot to hit and the words (FIRM STUN-FOLLOW + RIGHT ENGLISH).

• ANOTHER WAY shows the next-best way to play the shot.
• NEXT SHOT walks the run-out on a step; after a shot it plans again from where the balls really are.
• X puts it away.
• Asked for with ball in hand, it waits until you press BALL PLACED.
• It resets when the turn passes: the next player sees SHOW RUN-OUT again, never the last player's plan.
• In tournaments, run-out advice is locked.

Recording and streaming

A recording or a stream of a match gets the production graphics (see Streaming): the VS card, a score bug with both players beside it — the player at the table in purple — call-outs for each shot (3 IN, SCRATCH, GOLDEN BREAK), the rack winner, and a full-frame breakdown of the rack between racks. At the end of the match come the winner, the shot recap and the results. The breakdown and recap follow the Recap switch.

Things to know

• Ball call-outs — after each shot FusionCue says what it counted ("Fourteen. Fifteen.") and asks aloud about a ball it lost track of. Turn them off in the game's settings under Audio & voice → Ball call-outs.
• 9-Ball reads ball numbers, so it plays on the v8s v5 ball model with exact ball matching. It switches when the game starts and back when it ends.
• Game history — matches aren't saved to your game stats yet.
• If the game's card says Coming soon, Paused or Unavailable, it isn't open for your account right now.