Cowboy Pool - History

History

The parent game of cowboy pool, English billiards, is itself a hybrid of three predecessor billiards games – the winning game, the losing game and the carambole game (an early form of straight rail) – and dates to approximately 1800 in England. There are a number of pocket billiard games directly descended from English billiards, including bull dog, scratch pool, thirty-one pool and thirty-eight. Thirty-eight is the intermediary game from which cowboy is directly derived. This precursor game was first reported on in The New York Times on January 21, 1885: 'there is a new billiards game called "thirty-eight." It appears to have met with special favor among the many devotees of pool.'

Cowboy is very similar to thirty-eight, with the major difference being that thirty-eight requires the use of two cue balls and is played to just 38 points, thus its name. It is unknown how thirty-eight transitioned to the modified ruleset mandated by cowboy pool, nor the derivation of its name. What is known is that its first mention is in a 1908 rule book, published about the same time the well-known game eight-ball (under a prior name) was first gaining popularity. Although popular enough that its rules remain listed in authoritative rule books alongside just a handful of other games, apart from a small sanctioned tournament held in 1914, cowboy pool is strictly an amateur game.