Since 1st January 1998, the EPA has adopted the playing rules of the World Eightball Pool Federation (hereafter referred to as “WORLD RULES”) for use in all nationally organised events. Individual leagues are of course, still entitled to use any rules they wish to play. If your league wants to use World Rules they can do so. Similarly, if your league want to use rules such as the black to be played left-handed with both eyes shut, that too is OK (it might make the games go on a bit longer though!). All national competitions will, however, be played to World Rules.
We’ll start with a link to World Rules. This contains all the standard rules of the WEPF. We also have a link to the Old EPA Rules for those leagues that still use them, or for reference.
For those that are playing World Rules, we have two additional pages, The Referees Guidance Notes explain how to interpret the rules in certain situations. There are also the English Pool Referees Calling Procedures which explains that various calls that should be made during a game.
Some of you will be very new to World Rules or are perhaps a little unclear on a few things, so we now have some graphical explanations of the basics of the game. The EPA have a very useful section on Snookers, produced by Roy Slater, describing the various snooker situations that can occur.