Tag Archives: Straight Pool

Straight Pool & Equal Offense Scoresheet/Spreadsheet Update

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I’ve made some updates to the score sheets.

I’ve uploaded all of them now to GoogleDocs for one. That’s the big change.

Other small changes, currently exclusive to the GoogleDocs versions, are minor formatting changes, formulaic changes to rid the sheets of #DIV/0 errors, and the removal of some extraneous columns to help with formula drag filling.

Furthermore, I’ve shared all the GoogleDocs versions so they’re public for the finding, though I’ve retained exclusive editing rights.

As always, suggestions and tweaks, especially those that stem from trial-by-fire experience, are always welcome.

Straight Pool & Equal Offense Scores and Stats Sheets

Score Sheets

Here Be Screenshots

Overall statistics across matches.

The Stats Sheet… no input required, simply play and watch the numbers gather.

Match score sheet

The Match Sheet… plug in the match points and table size, and then for each inning, the balls pocketed in the “Balls” column, and why the inning ended in the “Finish” column. It’s that easy!

They’re provided as is, though I do tweak them a bit every now and again. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to comment below. I’m always open for suggestions and ideas.

All are in both Excel 2003 and GoogleDocs format.

  • Straight Pool (14:1 Continuous) Scoresheet (~220KB Excel 2003 .zip / GoogleDocs)

    A handy (at least for me) spreadsheet I built that takes most of the work out of playing Straight Pool. All the players need do, aside from actually bringing a laptop with them to make the recording of the match easier and the statistics real-time, is in the shaded columns place the number of balls potted, and then place a letter in the adjacent column indicating why the inning ended, be it a miss (m), a safety (s) or, Heaven forbid, a foul (f).

    What you get…

    • 1 worksheet for stats across 10 games
    • 10 worksheets, one for each game, on which match points, table size and scores are entered.

    What it does…

    • displays the total balls potted
    • tracks the current rack
    • tallies the balls potted in the current rack
    • figures the balls remaining in the current rack
    • determines the foul the player is on (with appropriate penalties for consecutive fouls)
    • knows the number of successful safeties
    • tells of the number of unsuccessful safeties
    • calculates the player’s current score
    • reveals the player’s high run
    • computes the number of runs 5 and over
    • enumerates the number of runs 10 and over
    • reckons the number of runs 20 and over

    As you can see, it’s chock full of geekish goodness. Enjoy!

  • Straight Pool (14:1 Continuous) Three Player Scoresheet (~313KB Excel 2003 .zip / GoogleDocs)

    This spreadsheet is pretty much the same as the other, keeping track of all the same things, except it does so for three players, rather than two. Sometimes it’s fun to play a game of Round Robin Straight. It keeps everyone involved and feeling good.

  • Equal Offense Scoresheet (~18KB Excel 2003 .zip / GoogleDocs)

    This one is pretty simple.

    1. For each frame in a game, put your run in the first column, and the reason the run ended in the second, be it a miss (m), a safety (s) or, Heaven forbid, a foul (f).
    2. Watch the pretty graphs draw themselves!


Straight Pool Scoresheet/Spreadsheet Update

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After playing with the spreadsheets last Sunday, some weaknesses became apparent. I’ve updated the spreadsheets to address those weaknesses.

To wit:

I now track the total number of balls potted, the current rack number, the balls potted in the current rack and the balls remaining in the current rack. This will help with score keeping if you’re anything like us and sometimes forget how many balls a player potted in their last inning. Without a dedicated score keeping lackey, it’s sometimes tough to keep track.

An interesting, if not entirely useful statistic would be the percentage of racks finished by each player. The formulas for keeping track of the current rack and ball count was tough enough, I’m really not sure how I’d go about that.

I also fixed some miscalculations in the 3 person score sheet. The stats for the third player were not being calculated correctly. They are now.

So, without further ado…

Straight Pool & Equal Offense Scores and Stats Sheets

Equal Offense Geekery

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While not nearly as complex as my Straight Pool Scoresheet, my Equal Offense scoresheet might still come in handy. I’ve used it (in one of it’s many incarnations) for years as a way to gauge my progress (always in the positive, btw – I’m doing something right).

You can download it on this page if you’re of the mind.

On the Scoresheet worksheet, each inning is split into two columns, the 1st for your score, and the 2nd for the “Frame Conclusion.” I’ve used drop down menus for the 2nd column… you have the options of “f” for Foul and “m” for Miss. The rest of the columns are self explanatory.

The Trends tab is there to show progress over time.

EO, in case you didn’t know, is basically one person Straight Pool. It’s structured so you can get a real sense of improvement and progress.

From the Pool & Billiards FAQ:

Same rules as straight pool (14.1) except as noted. (You must be familiar with those rules, or EO won’t make much sense, especially the break shot with the 15th ball.) Each player gets ten turns alone at the table; a turn begins with an open break of a full rack, and ends on a miss, foul, or run of twenty. Respot any balls that go in on the open break, and start with ball in hand in the kitchen. There is no penalty for scratching on the break. A foul does not subtract points, it just ends the turn, but balls made on a foul do not count. There is no head-to-head play, so there are no safeties.

There are variations you can apply, such as allowing three misses before you close the frame, or limiting yourself to 15 ball runs (preventing having to think about the break shot for the next rack). If you start one way, though, do yourself a favor and be consistent.

14:1 Continuous Spreadsheet Geekery Oh My!

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I’ve been toiling away for the last few days on a way to keep score during 14:1 Continuous (Straight Pool) matches in the most geekish way possible – with a spreadsheet. I hate trying to do the math while I’m playing a game of 14:1 on those little score pads built into the table, or worse yet, on an abacus style score string hung above the table. It’s distracting from my world beating runs of 6, or even 14 balls at a time! Using a handwritten scoresheet just means more math, and not much in the way of decent analysis.

Hence, the spreadsheet solution.

The rules are pretty involved, especially around fouls and the penalties therein, so it took a while to get it right. Frankly, I’m not convinced I have gotten it entirely right. So, while I’m making this spreadsheet available, use at your own risk, and if there’s money on the game, don’t come running to me if the score keeping isn’t entirely accurate. This is pre-alpha type stuff here, people.

That said, try out my Straight Pool Scores and Stats Sheet [~220KB .zip file] if you’re of the mind. There’s also a three person version [~320KB .zip file] available if you like to play three person Straight Pool.

All the cells are locked and the workbook and all included sheets are protected, but there is no password. I did that simply to ease the transition between cells, and to prevent any errant fiddling in the middle of a heated match.

The first sheet, “Stats” is where the matches are summarized. You shouldn’t have to do anything here but gaze in wonder at your prowess.

The rest of the sheets, named “1″ through “10″ are the matches. You can edit the colored cells, and they are:

  • Match Point is the number of points to win the match.
  • Table Size is there in case you want to know the table size you played the match on. I know… it’s only ever legitimate on a 9′ table, but sometimes it’s fun to mess around on 7′s and 8′s.
  • The column under the heading “Balls” is where you record the number of balls you made that inning. The next column under “Finish” is where you record why you quit shooting, be it a foul (f), a safety (s), or a miss (m). It’s important that you use the letters f, s and m in order for the stats and scores to be accurate.

I would like to work in a way to highlight when a rack is done. It might be nice to know how many racks it took to get to a certain score over time as a way of gauging progress.

Let me know what you think of it. I look forward to hearing what all three of you think!

Free Pool!

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With a $5 purchase of anything, Sharks is offering free pool(!) Sunday afternoons. Free pool is one of my favorite things in the world. Of course, it’s not technically “free” if you have to buy something to get it, but for $5, several hours on a 9′er is hard to beat.

The GF and I went up there just before 2 to meet another friend of ours. Our plan was to get some Straight Pool in, and generally start to whip our games back into shape. I’d spent the morning elbow deep in geekery building a spreadsheet that takes in the score for the inning, and what caused the inning to end, be it a foul, safety, or a miss, and automagickally calculate all sorts of nifty, but ultimately useless stats. I couldn’t wait to try it out. You know how I love my stats!

Not long after we sat down, the captain of another team I’ve been wanting to play on asked me what my afternoon looked like. They were getting ready to start a make-up match, and were short some players. Of course, at that point, my afternoon cleared right up! I ended up winning three and losing 1. I should have won, but I played the player instead of the table, and relaxed too much. He blundered past me by virtue of too many mistakes on my part. It could have been worse, though. The captain told me to show up Tuesday night ready to play. :)

The rest of the afternoon went pretty well. We shot some terrible 14:1 and put the spreadsheet through it’s paces. It could use some tweaking to make it easier to use while we’re shooting, but other than that, it’s not too bad. I may post it here once I’ve worked out some of the issues.

Carom Pocket Billiards

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I came up with this a few months ago… at least I think I did. I’m *sure* it’s been done before, and it’s possible that I have seen it or read about it, but I don’t recall either. It’s a variation on standard pocket billiards (8-ball, 9-ball, whatever really) that helps develop carom skills and a better sense of what happens after the cue ball and object balls make contact. In short, the cue ball receives the object ball, rather than being sent into the object ball. Continue reading →

A Billiards Personal Best

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Three of us, myself, Hafid and Dean have decided to play pool regularly at Dean’s house. We were just playing once a week, just trying to get back into the swing of it. But now that we’re back in said swing, we’ve decided to up the ante and play two or three times a week, at least. We figure we’ll play Monday, Wednesday and sometime on the weekend. There will probably be more than that, but that’s the minimum, with tonight being the start of our more extensive practice.

Practice, such as it is, really is nothing more than the three of us playing a very relaxed version of 14:1 Continuous, or Straight Pool. One will rack all 15 balls, give it his best 14:1 break, then shoot until he misses. We take turns shooting until we miss, and when the last ball is left, the Break Ball, we rack the 14 sunk balls and use that last ball to break it up… continue ad nauseum. The only full break (which is really a softer, minimal break, with only enough juice to get two balls into two rails and then back into the rack, while leaving the cue down at the other end of the table so as to leave your opponent with no shot) is at the beginning of the evening… after that, it’s full on continuous pool. Shoot at whatever you like, and just keep shooting until you miss. 14:1 is really a two person game, but there are three of us, so we improvise.

Tonight was especially nice for me. For the longest time, my record run was 15 balls. I just couldn’t get over that hump. I’d run a rack, but I couldn’t get that last ball in place to break up the 14 ball rack… so I was stuck at 15 balls in a row. Tonight I made 17. I got over the hump. :)

Tomorrow, we’re going back over for more.