Eight-ball - Informal Rule Variations - Canada

Canada

In Canada there are a similar level and types of variation as in the US (see below). One particularly common feature of Canadian bar pool is the "hooked yourself on the 8" rule — failure to hit the 8 ball when one is shooting for the 8 is a loss of game, unless one was hooked (snookered) by one's opponent (even then, if a pocket is called for the 8, as opposed to "just a shot", i.e. a safety, failure to hit the 8 is an instant loss). Pocketing an opponent's object ball while shooting for the 8, even if the shot was otherwise legal, is also a game-loser, often even in local league play. "Split" shots, where the cue ball appears to simultaneously strike a legal and an opponent's object balls, are generally considered legal shots in informal games, as long as they are called as split shots, and the hit is in fact simultaneous to the human eye. A further Canadian bar-pool peccadillo is that a shot is a visit-ending (but not ball-in-hand) foul if one pockets one's called shot but also pockets another ball incidentally, even if it is one's own (however, if that secondary pocketing was also called, the shot is legal, regardless of the order in which the balls were dropped).