Talk:Chinese eight-ball

[Warning] Derogatory tendency.

Article needs a total redo

This article is junk. There's one source that's a single entry in a 20+ year old book, for a insignificant variant with no organizers competition, and, to put it bluntly, a racist name. That's utterly not worthy of a whole article. Let alone one that's almost entirely unsourced and has dubious tags on it.

Especially when that article misappropriates a name space that has a far more notable and significant use of the term. In the year 2020, the term "Chinese eight-ball" means the version of eight-ball played in China, that is eight-ball played on a 9-foot table with snooker-like pocket shapes, cushion profile, and napped cloth. The article should be rewritten to cover the actual common use of the term. If the reverse eight-ball variant belongs anywhere (and again, I'm not sure it does; it has no formal codified rules), it should be called just that: "reverse eight-ball". That way it's disambiguated and doesn't rely on the old racist name. oknazevad (talk) 00:23, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Agreed. I don't know much about Chinese 8-ball, other than its basically Russian pyramid for eight-ball, but the article currently talks about a different game altogether. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 09:24, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

That's just it. The term does not mean the "reverse 8-ball" folk variant, not in 2020. It means standard American-style 8-ball (complete with 2 1/4-inch balls) played on what is essentially a 9-foot snooker table (with napped cloth, rounded pockets, and flat-faced cushions), which results in some differences in playing strategy. Apparently it arose beginning in the mid-80s when 8-ball took off in China (for reasons I've been unable to nail down), but true American-style pool tables were few and far between, so players made do with small-sized snooker tables, which were relatively common as up to that point snooker had been the most popular game in China. It sounds like it should be insignificant, but the richest pool tournaments in the world (all of pool, not just 8-ball) are played with such equipment. It's too important to not have a genuine article, and especially too significant for the article at the name to be about a forgotten, insignificant casual game. I'm pretty sure that the only reason the majority of people who even know about the folk game even do such is because they saw this article in the first place. oknazevad (talk) 13:52, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Addendum: the single reference doesn't even support this name for the game it describes, except as an alternate name. It uses "backwards pool". More evidence that this article is in total error. oknazevad (talk) 01:52, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

So I boldly said "screw it", and redirected this to the Eight-ball article pointing at the section on variants, which I expanded to include both versions. Now we can get away from the nonsense of giving an insignificant variant a whole article. And can get include the real Chinese variant, which may warrant a separate article, though it really is only equipment differences, not rule differences. More importantly, it identifies a need to actually create an article on the world's richest pool tournament, which has not been included. oknazevad (talk) 00:13, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

We do actually have an article on the Chinese Eight-ball World Championship, which does need a bit of work. This is good work, but I feel we could easily make a pretty good article on this subject in time. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 09:55, 30 December 2020 (UTC)