Eight Ball

Most of your points on Eight Ball will come from bonus and the spinner, with some added by the candy cane shot. Bonus is 3000 per ball completed; 1-4 at the top lanes, 5 and 6 are stand-up targets left and right, the 7 is the only return lane, on the right. You can’t get the 7 by skill, you’ll just have to hope the ball drops into it instead of the outlane somewhere along the way. A rack is 8 balls, not 15; even numbered players play balls 8-15 instead of 1-8. (It *is* Eight Ball, not Pool\!)

Skill Shot for ball one is the 4 lane, hoping to have the rebound either hit the 8-ball pad or go clockwise around the candy cane. After that, the Skill Shot is whichever number you still need, unless you have all four, in which case get whichever of the 2 or 3 lanes is lit for a multiplier progress advance.

There are three priority shots on this game. First is the large 8-ball pad target in the upper right in front of the candy cane; this lights the kickback at the bottom left and the spinner. In tournament settings, the kickback is usually NOT lit at the start of the game, making it that much more important to hit it a.s.a.p. On some Eight Balls, you can backhand the pad from the right flipper in addition to forehanding it from the left flipper. You can also score it frequently with a counterclockwise candy cane shot from the left flipper where the ball hits the top right bumper as it comes out of the candy cane and rebounds into the 8-pad. Important: when the ball is saved by the kickback, it turns off both the kickback and the spinner\! You must hit the 8-ball pad again to relight them, which takes precedence over other goals.

Second priority, once the kickback and spinner are lit, is the spinner on the left, for both the points and to go back up top to collect more pool ball numbers.

Third priority is the star rollover at the top of the candy cane, right of the \#4 top lane and behind the 8-ball target. This is your bonus multiplier advance. The first two hits just advance the score value of candy cane shots; the 3rd, 4th and 5th advance the multiplier to 2X, 3X and 5X. After that it's an extra ball, then it changes to and stays at 5000 points. The other way to advance the candy cane / multiplier value is to get the ball through the lit 2 or 3 top lane. One of these will light when you complete all four top lanes; which is lit alternates on switch hits.

The last goal is to complete the set of pool balls to advance to another rack and increase your bonus. Like many other games of this era, completing a set of something gives you a locked-in base bonus for future balls in play and allows you to start building more bonus. Bonus in this case is 3000 per ball made, times bonus multiplier. A complete rack of 8 balls gives you 24000 base bonus, and you can then add more balls in a second rack on the next ball (if any). I place finishing racks as the lowest priority since you can't collect the 7 ball by normal skillful play; you have to get the ball to go into the right side return lane rather than the outlane. It can't be reliably shatzed, and any kind of bank shot to try to get the ball over to that area has a high risk of draining. Just hope it happens on its own.

If you have collected the 7-ball and just need the 5-ball and or 6-ball to complete the rack, then consider shooting at the 5 or 6 stand-up targets (13 and 14 balls if you’re player 2 or 4). Avoid them the rest of the time. Once you have the 1-7 balls, hit the 8-pad to complete the rack. You cannot collect the 8 until you have finished 1-7.

The rare configuration of kickback/outlane only on the left and the broad, flatter-angled-than-typical slingshot on the left side make ball control on this game unique. Plan on making lots of little nudges to keep the ball out of the outlane and get it to settle onto the left flipper.

On many eight ball machines, you can backhand the spinner from the left flipper. Before adopting this as a strategy, though, test it out. Shots that don’t go all the way up to the top four lanes may fall back through the spinner and drain down the middle or otherwise go out of control. You only want to backhand if it’s either consistently successful or if halfway-up shots come safely back to a flipper.

Backhand or not, once you have the bonus at 5X and the spinner lit, it’s spinner all day however you want to do it.