Claudio;

It is fun to describe how to play Pool to someone. First you tell them that one game called 8-ball, is played with 15 balls plus a que ball. That can be confusing until you explain the rules.

One player gets the solid colors 1-7 and the other gets the striped colors 9-15. The player to get all his/her colored or striped objects into the hole first gets to shoot at the 8 ball (black object). The person who gets the 8 ball in first is the winner. If you get the 8 ball in the hole before you clear all your other objects you loose. There are of course more rules and different games.

Then we have 9 ball which is played with nine balls plus a que ball. That seems more logical.

In nine ball the first shooter begins with the lowest numbered (1-8)object and looses his/her turn when a ball is not shot into a hole. Then the second player continues and whoever gets the 9 ball into the hole wins.

Here is a term we use – “behind the eight ball”, which means according to "The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition":

A term, referring to the game of pool, meaning in an unfavorable or uncomfortable position: “After his unkind remarks were repeated to the boss, Gary really ended up behind the eight ball.”

Tom





>Really? eight ball is the black one here? Oh man, I'm glad I didn't go play pool here before knowing that... :)
>
>but wait... I think there's another difference: the seven ball that's black in Brazil is in the pool that we play with 7 balls. However, there's a slightly different type of pool that we play with 15 balls, and for that one, I can't remember what's the number of the black ball... with how many ball do you guys play pool here?
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>BTW, the "thing" in the pool here is a real "ball", or it's something like that weird "ball" that can be seen in American Football (c'mon, I'm still not convinced that that's a ball). <s>
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>also, let me clarify a little bit about the "seven ball" deal in Brazil: as you know by now, the seven ball is black in Brazil. It turns out that when we have a friend who's dark-skinned and fat, we call him "Bola Sete" (seven ball). But that's not in a derogative way.
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>I never get tired of learning cultural differences between the countries that I know a bit; it's usually fun. :)