How to play pool: a beginner's guide

August 12, 2026 · the Playpit blog

Learning how to play pool takes about ten minutes. It is the game where you hit a white ball with a stick so it knocks other balls into holes. That really is the whole thing. Everything else is detail, and you can pick the detail up as you go.

This guide covers what you need to walk up to a table and play a proper game: what the bits are called, how to aim, the rules of 8-ball, and the mistakes that catch out everyone who has never played. At the end there’s a free table you can practise on with no rules and no fouls at all.

The table and the balls

A pool table has six holes, called pockets — one at each corner and one halfway down each long side. The green cloth is the felt. The padded edges are the cushions, or rails.

There are sixteen balls:

• The white ball, called the cue ball. This is the only one you are ever allowed to hit with your stick.
• Seven solid balls, numbered 1 to 7.
• Seven striped balls, numbered 9 to 15.
• The black 8 ball, which is potted last and decides the game.

The stick is a cue. Putting a ball in a pocket is potting it, or sinking it.

How to hold the cue

Rest the thin end on the bridge you make with your other hand: put your palm flat on the table, raise your knuckles, and let the cue slide in the groove between your thumb and first finger. Hold the fat end loosely — a tight grip is the single most common reason a beginner’s shot goes sideways.

Keep the cue as level as you can and slide it straight back and straight through. Don’t lift it, and don’t jab. A smooth, unhurried push beats a hard one nearly every time.

How to aim

This is the part everyone gets wrong first, and it is worth understanding properly because it is simple.

Do not aim at the ball. Aim at the spot the white has to be in when it touches it.

Picture the line from the ball you want to pot to the pocket you want it in. Now imagine a ghost white ball touching your target ball on the exact opposite side from that pocket. That ghost is where your cue ball needs to arrive. Aim the white at the ghost, not at the ball.

Once you can see that ghost, pool stops being guesswork.

Two things follow from it:

• A straight shot, where the ball is directly between the white and the pocket, is the easiest shot there is. Take it when you can.
• A thin cut, where you can barely clip the edge of the ball, is the hardest. A tiny aiming error at the contact point turns into a huge error by the time the ball reaches the pocket. That amplification is the real reason pool is difficult.

How hard to hit it

Softer than you think. Beginners hit everything at full power, and hard shots do three bad things: they bounce out of the pockets, they scatter the table so you have no next shot, and they send the white somewhere you did not plan.

Use the gentlest shot that will still get the ball there.

The rules of 8-ball

8-ball is what most people mean by “a game of pool”.

1. The break. Rack the fifteen balls in a triangle with the 8 in the middle. One player hits the white into the triangle from the other end.
2. Picking sides. The table starts open — neither player owns a group yet. The first player to legally pot a ball after the break takes that group: solids or stripes. The other player gets the rest.
3. Your turn continues as long as you keep potting your own balls. Miss, and it’s the other player’s shot.
4. The 8 goes last. Once all seven of yours are down, the black is yours to pot. Sink it and you win. Sink it early, or pot it at the same time as a foul, and you lose immediately.

The fouls that catch everyone out

A foul usually means your opponent picks the white up and puts it wherever they like — which in practice hands them the game. The common ones:

• Potting the white. Called a scratch. It is the most frequent foul in pool by a mile.
• Hitting the wrong ball first. Once you own solids, the white must touch one of yours first.
• Hitting nothing at all.
• No ball reaching a cushion. After the white touches a ball, something has to be potted or some ball has to reach a rail. This stops players nudging the white an inch and calling it a turn.
• Potting the 8 too early, which loses you the game outright.

Five things that will make you better quickly

1. Aim at the ghost ball, not the ball. Nothing else improves your potting as fast.
2. Hit it softer. Really.
3. Look at where the white finishes, not just at whether the ball went in. Good players are choosing their next shot while they take this one.
4. Take the easy shot. A straight pot you will make beats a clever one you probably won’t.
5. When you have nothing on, play safe. Leave the white somewhere awkward instead of hitting hopefully and handing over an easy table.

Now go and try it

Reading about aiming only gets you so far — you have to watch a ball go where you sent it.

Chalkwick is a free pool game in your browser. There’s no download and no account, and it opens on a racked table so you can shoot straight away. Turn the rules off entirely and just hit balls until the aiming makes sense, then switch on 8-ball when you want a real game.

It also draws a guide line showing where the white will go and where it will bounce, which is the fastest way to learn what a cushion actually does. You can turn that down as you get better.

And once the normal table stops being interesting, Chalkwick has rooms that are round, rooms bent into an L, and rooms with a post in the middle of the felt — which is a very good way to find out whether you really understood cushions or just memorised a rectangle.