Four Ball Pool in Korea

Hey Gang, This week I decided to find out how to play the four ball pool that is popular in Korea and that I had never seen before. To do this I enlisted Yunkun to be our guide in the world of Korean Pool and my roommate Frank came along.

Our guide Yunkun!

So the first thing to note about the table is that there are no pockets. In Korean Pool you start with a certain number of points and try to get rid of them as fast as possible. To get rid of your points you need to use your cue ball to hit both red balls on the same turn without touching your cue ball to the other cue ball.

Here is the initial point set up. The clock counts how long we are playing at the top, The three players are on the left side with me starting with 5 points, Frank starting with 5 points and Yunkun Kim starting with 10 points because he is the most experienced. There are pool gloves provided if you want to wear them, a tray of drinks is brought to you and you are welcome to as many refills as you would like.

Initial setup

The initial set up is shown above with the yellow cue ball going first. This is tricky because you need to hit both red balls. If you do this you get to go again. If you touch the other cue with your cue ball ball or don’t touch either red ball however you gain a point putting you worse off than you were before.

Roommate Frank

Frank makes a shot while the owner and pool master looks on. If Frank can just graze the first ball and then hit the second ball he will get rid of a point.

Once you have gotten rid of all your points you need to get a three cushion to win the game. This is really tricky as you need to hit three sides of the table and one of the red balls before you hit the other red ball. Once you are at this stage it no longer matters if you hit the other cue ball. Here I am trying to figure out how to get the three cushion.

People who play regularly have storage cabinets for their cues. (Sorry about the blurry picture)

Included beverages

All in all playing four ball pool was a lot of fun. My only complaint is that there are people smoking in the pool halls and I dislike smelling like smoke when I leave.

By Read from Canada