Pool - Definition and Overview

Pool has several meanings:

• It is any of several games similar to billiards, distinguished by using a table that has one pocket at each corner and one in the middle of each of the two longer sides. See Eight ball, or the note about the UK version.
• It is a small body of water, often man-made. See swimming pool.
• A pool can be a group of businesses or individuals who unite to further their interests, such as the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool.
• A form of gambling in which a group collectively bets on an outcome of a sports team or other happening. This sense is also called a kitty.
  • In American football: A football pool is much like a casino game in which the winner is determined by a wheel with numbered frets, each corresponding to a square in the payoff matrix.
  • The British Football Pools are contests based on predicting the outcome of each week's major soccer matches.
  • The total money wagered on a specific type of bet in a parimutuel wagering operation.
  • It is sometimes another word for a poker pot.
• A pool is also a container for money to which many people contribute, and also a container for messages in an anonymous remailer.
• In computer science, a memory pool is an area of storage reserved to be allocated in a special, regular way.
• The Pool region of the Republic of the Congo (named for the former "Stanley Pool" of the Congo), is currently the home of a low-level insurgency led by "Pasteur Ntumi."