The Rise and Fall of Straight Rail

Straight rail is a difficult game of pool, it’s based on a table that has regions on it, and you will need to hit both object balls and land in an area to score points.  You will win the match when you have reached a certain score that you have decided on prior to the game.  Since some players aced how to rake up a whole bunch of points in straight rail the game of balkline was invented.

With balkline you had a few more rules that made it harder to score.  Straight rail game from Europe and was created in the 1700s.  A part of straight line that was outlawed shortly after players started doing it was the technique crotching.  This refers to the two object balls being at the point on a table that the corner meets, and the cue ball can be hit off of them and continually scoring points up against your opponent.

Even with this shot style being outlawed the game gained in popularity and other shots were created one being the gather shot, which brings a cue ball and object balls near the rail.  Also created was the nurse, which is a way of getting the balls in a close vicinity of the rail.  With a nurse shot there are really a bunch of different nurse shots, such as the chuck, Dion’s, edge, pass, rail and several others.  The most important nurse shot to the game of straight rail is the rail nurse.  It’s where you continually nudge a ball down the rail in very small increments.  This is a great ability for a player to have to pull off this type of nurse.

Straight rail began falling from popularity in 1879, although it was still popular in Europe.  It’s very uncommon for the game of straight rail to be played in the United States today.  But it still remains to be played in Europe.

‎It was a fairly easy game to play once these specific shots were practiced enough, if you got good enough at those skill shots you could win a game quickly.  However if you want to try the game now you will most likely have to travel to Europe to see it played.  But if you do try it you might want to practice a few of the skilled shots before you try the game of straight rail.