YAHOOOOOOO POOL (games.yahoo.com)

Member Name: Rocawear

Product:	games.yahoo.com
Date:	13/03/03 (2171 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: fun, something to pass time

Disadvantages: sometimes yahoo lags

Yahoo pool consists of, um now lets see, around 200 rooms????? Each room can handle quite a lot of people!! Around 100 regular pool users, and then they have the capacity to hold the extra’s, who use the backdoors into the pool rooms.

People who use the backdoors are usually members of a league, I myself am part of the FreakyPoolers League, a league which operates out of the Alien room, which is usually packed to bursting and this is when the backdoor comes in useful!!!!

Be in a Position To Play Pool

First of all, you need a yahoo ID, takes about 3 minutes to create, just like your msn’s and your AOL’s. once you have this ID you go to yahoo games, and click on pool, enter your new ID and password. It will bring you to a game room page, which lists all the rooms currently running under yahoo control, now out of the 200+ rooms that exist, maybe 20-50 will be open, this means that they are the ones which have not reached their capacity and are allowing more entry to fill up. When you Click on one of the open rooms, a new screen will appear, this is the room!!!! Do not think it is a dumb pop-up you need this window!!!!!!

So Your in The Room

Within the room window, first of all you have a list of all the people, identified by their yahoo ID, there is also a list of tables, the ones that are open, or only have 1 player are at the top of this list, it refreshes and updates every few seconds, to join an open game, simply click ‘Join’ in this area, on the table you would like to join. Also on the room screen is the lobby, the lobby is basically like any other chat room, you can talk to people and so-on, however do not use CAPITAL LETTERS, capital letters are reserved for the league administrators to announce tournaments which they are holding.

Play Pool

As I said, to join an open table you click ‘join’ on the table that you would like to play at. There are 2 different s
ettings you have to be aware of. When u first sign up, you have an automatic rating, its 1200, playing rated games will either boost or decrease this rating, depending, obviously, on whether you win or lose. So our first setting is a rated or unrated game. The second is a timed game, timed games can range from 5seconds per shot (really stupid, you have no time to get a decent shot off) and a lot of time!!! Basically.

So you have picked a table without a stupid time limit, and whether rated or not is a personal preference. So ANOTHER screen appears, again DO NOT EXIT, this is the actual table where you will be playing!!!!!!!!
So you join the table, you sit down, by clicking the open sit tab at the top of the table window, then you hit start, the balls appear all ready and racked and the cue ball is on the table.

To move the cue ball you simply click and hold the left mouse button on the cue ball, and move it to where ever you so choose.

As you will see when it gets to your turn, protruding from the cue tip is a line, this is for aiming purposes. To move the cue around the cueball you left mouse click on the cue and drag the cue to where you want it to go. Now the line protruding form the cue goes where the cue goes, so aim the cue / cueball, to hit a ball, the line hits the ball, and then shows you where that ball will go when struck by that alignment, however this aiming device doesn’t have very much distance, so its useful up close but its on you to get the long shots!!!!

To the left of the actually table is a white ball, this is for spin, just move the cursor around the ball to give the cue ball the desired spin.

And away you go, once either you or your opponent pots, the balls which you have to pot (striped or solids) show next to your name, so now your set. If you play a rated game your rating changes automatically as you win or lose.

Now within most rooms are leagues, like I said I belong to the f
reakypoolers league in ALIEN, to become a member simply go into the main room, and ask if there is a league operating within that room, if there is then they will give you directions to sign up, as they differ through each league.

Once part of a league, you continue to gain lose rating points through winning and losing, but you are now able to take part in league games (lg) and for each lg game you win or lose, your rating changes accordingly, and you move up and down that particular league ladder. You can also enter tournaments for BUX, obviously they mean diddly squat in real life, but they are what enable you to enter the tournaments.

I like to play pool at night, to relax basically, and if you get into a decent league, or room, you usually have some decent games, if you do get into a league you will notice that some people don’t actually have lives, and they sit there all day everyday playing pool in the same room!!!!

But its fun, its something better than sitting looking at dumb stuff online or infront of the squark box

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