Yahoo Pool Guide

“Yahoo Pool is a great place for beginners to start playing, but realistic enough for advanced players to challenge each other.”

Adam Sinclair - pool player

I've played pool for some time now. The dynamics of the real game are often too complex to manage. That's why I started playing computer simulated pool games. Yahoo Pool brings some degree of simplification to these rules. It hasn't been long since I first began to play Yahoo Pool that I noticed it started taking more and more of my time. I don't know how it is for you but I usually get addicted to the things I like very much. A pool player in the real world must first improve his handling of the stick shot, must train to raise his shot accuracy etc. These are nasty possibly boring aspects of the pool game that take a lot of time and practice.

A simulation by contrast hasn't got all these “problems”. In a simulation you can concentrate on the interesting part, the game itself. You can try to position the balls after each shot so that the next ones will be easier to accomplish. This is what the game is mostly about: strategy. With yahoo pool you can concentrate on the interesting part of the game.

In the real world you generally integrate into a community of players and play against each other. On the internet this community expands greatly. This is one of the strengths of Yahoo Pool: you can get to play against another human player any time of the day.

Not long after Yahoo Pool appeared people wanted some help as they were just beginning to play. As an analogy to the specially designed real cue balls that help you shoot more precise automated pool aimers appeared. These programs consist of routines for detecting the balls and cue stick direction and use this information to help the player have a better perspective on the shot itself. One of these programs is YPool Aimer (Yahoo Pool Aimer). It can be considered an extension of the default implementation of the virtual ball and line from Yahoo itself. The program goes even further by implementing a virtual simulation table. Here the player can watch the situation develop after each adjustment of cue direction and ball positions. At this stage the player can actually enjoy the game experience. He is not required any more to criticize himself over incorrect calculation when taking a shot. He can look ahead and see the important things to develop and that's strategies to really win the game. It is important to understand that getting a ball in the pocket now is significant only if the next shots will be easier to pocket. Not considering the overall plan is almost as letting luck decide on who wins and who loses.

Now let's get back to details about Yahoo Pool. The game even thought it has simplified dynamics compared to the real world or even other computer simulations cannot be perfectly mastered. It has a built-in degree of randomness to each shot. This is why there can be only a high probability of estimating the ball movements and not absolute certitude. YPool Aimer considers these most probable outcomes and shows them to the user.

There are lots of books out there that can teach you very much about the pool game. I won't try to include here any in-depth information regarding this, but here are some tips:

• keep your shots simple (don't try to do any spectacular ones, but improbable to pocket)
• try to get the white ball somewhere in the middle after every shot (so that you have a better chance of shooting simple shots next time you do it)
• play with better gamers than you so that you learn from them (and also earn more points on Yahoo Pool)

Further Details

Yahoo pool rules:
http://games.yahoo.com/games/rules/pool/rules.html?page=pl