PoolMaster is a sophisticated simulation program for use as a learning tool for improving your play on a real table or for simply enjoying the game. The visual animation of table action; rail bounces, smooth and continuous ball motion and roll, the effects of draw, follow, and left or right english are totally realistic. The balls and pockets are properly scaled for championship size tables for each game. Not only can PoolMaster aim for straight-in shots, it can shoot various types of bank, kiss, and combination shots. When no shot is apparent, PoolMaster may find a dead shot in the rack, and if you get in trouble, you can curve the cue ball around other balls with a Masse' shot. PoolMaster features a familiar graphical user interface and a data panel for monitoring the game status. 15-rack

You may select from popular pool games; Straight-Pool, Nine-Ball, Eight-Ball, One-Pocket, or watch fifteen interesting trick shots. Billiard games include both Straight-Rail and Three-Cushion. Snooker is played according to international rules. At any time, games may be paused, resumed, restarted, or backed-up by a user-specified number of shots (up to 99). You may also alter the game by moving the balls around, dragging them into the pockets, or resetting them back up on the table.

You can choose to play against the computer, another player, or elect to watch the computer play against itself. The user has complete control over each shot; the object ball and target pocket, shot speed, magnitude and type of english, and cue ball aim point. Shot aiming tools are provided to help you shoot those difficult shots. You have the option of having the computer aim for you if you prefer or even to suggest the shot and how to shoot it.

Ten levels of computer play range from beginner to professional. At the higher levels of computer play you may view 100-ball straight pool runs, see consistent runs of nine-ball racks, watch record-breaking runs of billiards, or observe century snooker breaks.

To see some really fancy shotmaking, you may force the computer to shoot only certain difficult types of shots. Other options allow you to enable or disable computer random shot errors that simulate varying shotmaking ability. You may also turn on or off the sound effects, the ball path line traces, the shooting cue, and the user-shooting aiming help guide.

You may modify several parameters that control the characteristics of play: the coefficients of rolling and sliding friction, the rotational and translational rail bounce efficiency, the ball collision efficiency, the simulation time interval, and the time delay factor.

Various aspects of the simulation may be graphed to illustrate the effects of the parameters: the rail bounce efficiency, cue ball collision deflection angles, cue ball roll distances, and permissible shot errors.

An on-line help feature describes every PoolMaster function and provides additional information that enhance the utility and enjoyment of the program.

VGA color and mouse. Note that PoolMaster is a DOS program. Will run under Windows 95/98/ME/XP.

Download PoolMaster 4.21 here (259,567 bytes).

"POOL.ZIP" is a zip file with all the necessary files for PoolMaster. After extraction, you may delete the downloaded file to reclaim the disk space. "POOL.EXE" requires 501K free memory.

If you decide to keep and use PoolMaster, I ask that you send a $20 registration fee to: CarTest Software, P.O. Box 4213, Palos Verdes, CA 90274. You may also register on-line using PayPal.