By popular request, I’m going to explain how to play a game of Cowboy Pool. Cowboy is basically a game of 8 Ball except it’s all backwards. So instead of shooting the cue ball into an object ball and pocketing it, I’m going to do the reverse; I’m going to shoot the object ball off the cue ball and pocket it. In the video below, I’m playing stripes so I’ll start with shooting the 14 ball. As you can see, I’m not shooting with a great deal of force. I’m just lining up the ball to the edge.

So, when I want to shoot the next ball in (the 15). Instead of lining it up to the center of the pocket, I want to line it up to the edge of the pocket. Then I want to line up the 15 sight along the edge of that. I’ll take my shot and it’ll go in. I’ll continue as long as I can until I miss, at that point it’s the next players turn (they’re playing solids). That player continutes to keep shooting until he misses. And so on and so forth.

Basically, the whole point of playing Cowboy is teaching yourself to scratch on purpose. While this may seem counter-intuitive, you’ll discover that when you play a regular game, those techniques you used will work their way into that game and you’ll have a much better understanding of the game now that you’ve (literally) been on the other side of all those tricky shots.