By Victor Jean Ouellette. July 2016.

Modified August 22, 2016. Modified January 4, 2018 

The table I play on at home is 39" x 77" from rail to rail or cushion nose to cushion nose. That’s 99.09 cm x 195.58 cm in the metric system. It's called a 7 foot table. The balls are solids and stripes numbered 1 to 15. I decided I would start with a very simple easy game placing all the solid balls immediately in front of the pockets, then progress from there. And then, laying the striped balls in a specific interference T pattern to make the game a little more interesting.

The dots or spots around the rail of the table are commonly called Diamonds or Sights.

 1.

Naming Pockets

Standing at the short side of the table where the manufacturers label is I numbered the pockets starting in the upper right-hand corner as pocket Onetwo and then going clockwise, pocket Threefour, pocket Five, pocket Six, pocket Seven, and pocket Eight in upper left hand of the table's opposite short side.

Naming the Rails

We have six rails, all about 32 inches in a 7 foot table. We also have 12 additional tiny Mini PocketRails on each side of the six pockets. They are about 2 or 3 inches each depending whether they are in a side pocket or a corner pocket. We name rails using the pockets names. We will use the default term ‘rail’ to mean the larger maxi rails, and the term Mini PockeRail to mean the tiny rails in the pocket circle.

One will notice that those PocketRails don't have a nose. That would just be a detail of pool trivia.

There's a Onetwo-Threefour rail. There's a Threefour-Five rail. There's a Five-Six rail often called the Head Rail. And, Six-Seven, Seven-Eight, and Eight-Onetwo rails. The Eight-Onetwo rail is sometimes called the foot rail.

So, the Five-Six PocketRail would be in the Five pocket while the Six-Five PocketRail would be in the Six pocket. And so on, all the way around the table. Make sense?

Naming Gridlines

A seven foot table will likely have 7 lateral gridlines and three longitudinal grid lines, ten in all. If we want to name them then we should think of the table as a graph and start in the lower left corner and go up. There are four commonly named gridlines called Strings. Gridline G1, Gridline G2 (commonly called the Head String), Gridline G3, Gridline G4 commonly called Centre String, Gridline G5, Gridline G6 commonly called the Foot String, and Gridline G7 are all on the lateral (across the short side of the table) starting in the lower left and going up. Gridlines G8, G9 (commonly called the Long String), and G10 are along the long side of the table starting in the lower left and going to the right. The centre lateral grid line is G4 going through the centre of the table and the centre longitude gridline, the Long String, is G9 also going through the centre of the table.

The angular lines are another story for the more advanced players.

 3.

Level 1 Set Up

The balls used are typically the ones used in the 8 ball game. Ball number one, the yellow ball, is placed right at the edge of it’s pocket in the centre of pocket Onetwo. The blue ball, number two, is placed immediately in front of the number One-ball, touching it (frozen) and on a diagonal line directly toward the centre of the concave edge of Seven pocket.

 4.

Ball three is placed in the centre of the Threefour pocket right at the edge, and ball four is immediately in front of ball 3 toward the centre of the table and touching ball 3 (frozen).

The other balls are placed in front of their respective pockets, at the edge and centred.

 6.

The striped ball, yellow number nine, is placed on the rail between the Eight pocket and the Seven pocket about 19.5 inches (49.5 cm) from the centre of the rim of the eight pocket, right where the second dot from the pocket is on the side of the table. That is on the G6 gridline (the Foot String). Number 10 ball is placed about a ball and 1/2 width 90° in front of it and ball 11 again about a ball and 1/2 width 90° in front of ball 10, which puts it 10 inches (25.4 cm) from the rail. By 'in front' we mean toward the centre of the table as one stands at the side and looks at the table from the side.

These three striped balls 9, 10, 11, form a straight line 90 degrees to the rail and ball 11 is at the junction of the two grid lines G6 and G8 at the cross hair of those gridlines.

 8.

Ball 13 is on the opposite rail from ball 9 directly opposite, and on the rail at the corresponding dot 19.5 inches from the Onetwo pocket’s centre rim at G6, the Foot String. Looking from the 9-ball dot, Ball 12 is 2-ball widths to the left of ball 13, toward the Onetwo pocket. Ball 14 is two ball widths to the right of ball 13, toward the Threefour pocket. Ball 15 is 2-ball widths from ball 14.

 9.

Balls 12, 13, 14, 15 are all on the rail and form a sort of T shape with balls 9, 10, 11.

 10.

The white cue ball is put in the very centre of the table.

 11.  

Balls 3, 4, the cue ball and ball 7 form a straight line along the G4 gridline.

 12.

One learns in this game that it is not all that critical to have the balls in exact spots especially the starting cue ball as there is leeway with some forgiveness as the pockets are about the width of two balls.

See Solo Pool Rules for the set up for each successive level from 2 through 7.

Table Set Up Chalk Markings

I like to put 3 tiny markings on the table top with chalk. One just a cm toward the head in the middle of the table for cue ball. Just so that positioning the cue ball in the centre of the table does not put it directly on that chalk mark. (If you put the cue ball on the chalk mark then your shot will pull chalk in a line toward the OneTwo pocket and that does not look so good.)

Another chalk mark goes at the gridline cross hairs of G6 and G8. See notes on Gridline (G) numbers above. This is for positioning the 11 ball, the red striped ball. Put that ball directly on the chalk mark as this ball is not supposed to be struck. Put the 11 ball on that mark now and put the 9 ball on it's spot touching the Seve-Eight rail on G6. I also like to put a tiny chalk mark on the cushion nose at that spot too. Now with those two balls in place (the 9 and 11 balls), place a chalk mark directly centred between the two balls. That mark is for ball 10, the blue stripe ball.

Four tiny chalk marks go on the Onetwo-Threefour rail to centre the striped balls easily and quickly. Set The 13-Ball at the right G6 nose of the Onetwo-Threefour rail, on the dot that's on the hand rail then put a chalk mark on that nose at the centre of ball 13.

Use the 1-ball and 2-ball to space the distances on each side of the 13-ball. To the right of ball 13 place the One and Two balls beside the 13 ball and touching it, then place ball 12 to the right of those and touching. These four balls should all be touching each other. Put a chalk mark on the nose in the centre of ball 12 to indicate where ball 12 is supposed to go. 

Do the same as above for ball 14 to the left of ball 13, and ball 14 to the left of ball 14. Then marked the cushion nose with a tiny chalk stripe at the centre of those balls.

Now it will be easy to replace those balls after one loses. And one will lose a lot. LOL

In summary, there will be three chalk marks on the table top and five on the cushion nose.

Practice Chalk Marks

On my table I place a tiny chalk mark on the table top in various spots to reposition the cue ball easily when I am practicing a difficult hidden shot over and over again.