How to play live online, aim, control spin and power, read path previews, set up positions, use the shot recommender, and play frames.
CueSim is a real pool table in your browser — somewhere to play with the game as much as play it. Try shots, study angles, recreate positions you've seen, or rack up a rack against a friend or the computer.
Under the hood it's a proper physics simulator. Every shot is modelled — cushion bounces, spin transfer, throw, swerve, jumps and masses — with no scripted outcomes. If you put bottom-left on a thin cut at three-quarter pace, the cue ball does what the laws of physics say it should. The path previews on screen are the engine running ahead of time, so what's drawn is exactly what will happen.
That opens up things a normal pool game doesn't:
And when you do want to compete, the simulator wears a referee's hat. Break a rack Solo, Pass & Play with a friend, against the Computer (which uses the same recommender at varying strengths), or Online against a live opponent. The Challenge panel turns it into structured practice with star ratings — and you can build your own challenges and publish them for everyone to play.
Four codes are on offer, each on its own table: 8-ball on the American 9ft table (solids and stripes, ball-in-hand on a foul), 8-ball on the English 7ft table (reds and yellows, two shots on a foul), and 9-ball and 10-ball on the American table. The referee applies the standard rules for whichever you pick.
The menu is on screen when you arrive, and the Menu button brings it back from the table. It's the quick way to start a game, and the way into the other parts of the simulator.
The large cards start a rack straight away: Play the computer, Play online or Pass & play. Set up a match… is those same games with the details filled in — skill, names, and who breaks. The buttons along the bottom open the other places: the help guide, feedback, the leaderboard, your account, tools and about.
Between the cards and those buttons is Practice table, next to Solo high score. That's the table for the chapters that follow — aiming, cue control, reading the table, setting up positions and watching the shot. No score, and the balls go wherever you put them, so you can work on the cue. A full rack is covered further down, under Playing a rack.
A shot, once you're on that table, is three steps:
Turn on Path Hint while you learn — it draws the cue ball's line up to the first contact, and a little way beyond it so you can see the angle off a cushion. Once you can read angles by eye, switch it off and rely on your own aim.
Stuck on a position? On the practice table, press Recommend. That button is only there — a rack or a challenge hides it. The AI Recommender runs the actual physics on hundreds of candidate shots and ranks the best lines. Useful as a coach, not just a button to press for points.
Need a rest? The simulator automatically calculates the requirement based on your stated height and cue-hand (left/right), and positions one automatically. You can also drop or lift one yourself any time with the Cue bridge tool: the standard rest (R) seats the cue in its X-cross, while the spider (Shift+R) arches high so the cue bridges OVER balls hampering the shaft behind or in front of the cue ball.
There are three ways to aim, and they're useful in different situations:
In Aim mode (A) on the default Aim camera, the camera sits behind the cue and orbiting also turns the shot. This is the natural way to line up a pot — you're sighting down the cue. The further you orbit, the bigger the aim change, so it's best for the coarse part of an aim.
You can stay in Overhead or TV view and aim from there too, if you'd rather not leave those. In Aim mode, drag on the empty cloth and the shot turns while the camera stays parked. The other fixed views — a cushion, or reverse aim — still only move the camera. Come back to Aim, Overhead or TV when you want to commit a line.
The two small arrows near the tip of the cue are the fine-aim control. They are deliberately different from orbiting, the aim wheel and the other aim controls: the aim moves, and the camera does not, so a nudge doesn't swing the view.
The tick-marked drum marked FINE at the end of the Aim / Look pill is the Aim wheel: a slow, steady fine-aim control. Drag it left or right and the cue turns with your finger at a fixed gentle rate (about 1° per 40px) no matter how far the camera is zoomed — drag right, the tip swings right; let go and it stops dead. It works in every camera view, and the ← / → keys still step 0.01° a press. In the Object Ball view the wheel, arrows and keys all go finer still, sized to the shot: the longer and thinner the cut, the smaller each step, so a nudge always moves the object ball's line by about the same hair. Prefer buttons? Pick Arrows under Shot settings → Fine aim to get the ◀ ▶ fine-tune arrows in its place instead.
Look mode (L) lets you orbit, pan and zoom freely while the cue stays locked. Use it to check a pocket angle, scout the path of a ball, or check whether you're hooked behind a blocker. Switch back to Aim when you're ready to play. Look is a desktop feature — on a phone or tablet the Look button isn't shown.
Object Ball (O) zooms onto the first ball your aim line touches and shows the contact point. It's the simulator's version of getting down behind the line — much easier to judge "am I half-ball or three-quarters?" here than from behind the cue. Press A, L or Esc to come back.
The Shot settings panel has an Aim slider for the full ±180° sweep, plus Fine tune (±2°) for hundredths of a degree. After each shot the fine offset is folded into the coarse aim, so you always get the full ±2° fine range for the next shot.
Where you strike the cue ball matters as much as the aim. Use the spin ball at the top of the power slider — drag its dot for a quick nudge, or tap it for a large ball you can place the tip on precisely. The mark on the cue ball itself shows where the tip will land. If you'd rather drag that mark directly on the ball (or the cue in Aim view), pick On the cue ball under Shot settings → Spin control. The Vertical / Side spin sliders in Shot settings (and Shift + arrow keys) do the same thing if you prefer keyboards.
You can't strike off the edge of the ball: the tip is clamped to a realistic miscue envelope. If you push the offset further, the engine just clips it back — the rendered tip is where the ball will actually be hit.
The vertical Power slider runs from a barely-rolling touch (very soft) to a full break (very strong). It's quadratic: the lower half is for safeties and positional shots, the top half for power. Hold + / − to ramp without taking your eye off the table.
There are two ways to use the power bar, and you can switch between them any time under Shot settings → Cue power:
Catapult is the default on phones and tablets; Slider + Take Shot is the default with a mouse and keyboard. Whatever you pick is remembered on that device.
Before the backswing, the cue plays a couple of warm-up strokes at the ball. Show feathering before the shot, in Shot settings, turns that off when you want the cue to go straight into the strike. The choice is remembered on this device.
The Follow slider on the right edge models how long the tip stays with the ball. Leave it on Neutral for normal shots. Push it up (Through / Deep) to deepen spin — sharper screw-back, more aggressive running side. Push it down (Short / Stab) for a dab. A very low follow-through near touching balls is judged a push shot and refused.
Elev raises the butt of the cue. Use it for jump shots, masse curves around a blocker, or simply to clear a cushion sitting behind the cue ball. The slider's minimum lifts itself automatically when there's something in the way — that's the engine telling you the flat stroke won't fit. A masse is just elevation plus side spin; a jump is elevation plus a firm strike with topspin.
The path previews are the simulator's best learning tool. Because they run the real physics, what you see is exactly what will happen if you shoot.
If the previewed line surprises you, that's worth pausing on — usually it's throw on a slight cut, or running side carrying off a cushion. The preview is a reliable teacher of those small effects.
You can rearrange the table whenever a rack or challenge isn't in progress.
Take a phone snap of a real table and use Import from photo… (Tools). The detector finds the cushions, pockets and balls and rebuilds the layout. Drag any misdetected balls to fix the position.
Copy share link, under Share position, encodes the entire scene — ball positions, settings, in-progress score — into a URL. Send it and the recipient opens the exact rack in their browser. Useful for pool puzzles, mid-rack discussions, or asking for a second opinion. Tick Include predicted paths if you want them to land with previews already on. Links open in Aim by default. In another camera view, choose Open in that view instead of Open in Aim.
On a computer, the camera button opens a panel of presets: Aim, TV view, Overhead, Baulk cushion, Top cushion, Left, Right, and Reverse aim. Each is useful for a different job — overhead for plotting position, cushion views for safety angles, TV view for the cinematic look. On a phone or tablet the same button doesn't open that panel. It cycles the view: Aim, then Overhead, then back to Aim. While you're watching a match it also stops on TV view.
After-shot camera picks how the camera behaves once you've shot:
Shot zoom nudges in on the cue ball at impact for a moment of focus. Slow motion in this panel slows the live shot itself.
After every shot the Replay button lights up. Click it for a re-run of the last shot; open its menu to go further back — Last, 1 back or 2 back replays any of the last three shots still in your undo history — and to pick any of the eight camera presets — plus a Pot angle that follows the ball into the pocket — and optional replay-only slow motion. Tick Download recording and the panel button becomes Play and download — that path captures the replay and saves the video. Video shape picks the frame: Browser matches your window, Square (1:1) suits a feed post and Portrait (9:16) suits Reels, TikTok and Shorts — the camera reframes the table for the chosen shape and the screen dims outside it while it records. The main Replay button never records. The replay is byte-identical to the original, so it's the right place to study a near-miss frame by frame.
Start recording (Tools) records a video of what's happening on the table, up to one minute. Set your camera first — TV view plus a slow-motion replay is the usual recipe for a shareable clip. Or open Replay's menu, tick Download recording, and hit Play and download to capture the chosen shot automatically. Stop a live recording via the red indicator at the top of the scene.
In the 8-ball games the rules engine handles group assignment (solids and stripes on the US table, reds and yellows on the UK table), the open-table phase, fouls, scratches, ball-in-hand after a foul (US) or two-shots (UK), the 8-ball, and win detection. Potting the 8 before your group is cleared, or on a foul, loses the rack. The score chip top-left tracks the current turn — click it for a breakdown of pots.
9-ball and 10-ball are rotation games: there are no groups, and the cue ball must strike the lowest-numbered ball on the table first every single shot. Beyond that, anything you pot counts and you carry on — a ball potted off a legal contact keeps you at the table, whether or not it was the one you were aiming at. Miss that first contact, scratch, or knock a ball off the table and it's a foul: the opponent takes ball-in-hand anywhere. The break has to be a real one — pot a ball, or drive at least four object balls into a cushion — or that too is a foul. Pot the money ball legally and you win the rack outright, combinations included. The 9 counts even on the break; a 10 potted on the break goes back on the foot spot and the breaker plays on. A money ball that goes down on a foul is likewise respotted rather than deciding the rack. The chip top-left shows which ball you're on.
After a legal break the incoming shooter may announce a push-out before they play: the cue ball does not have to hit a ball or a rail, and the opponent then chooses to take the table or pass the shot back. Shots are never called (so slop counts in 10-ball as well as 9-ball), and the three-consecutive-fouls loss is not played. An illegal break is a plain foul here too, rather than offering the incoming player a re-rack.
Open Play Online from the intro menu, or pick Online in the Play panel. Two ways in:
The rules engine referees both sides. You only take a shot on your visit; while the opponent is at the table you watch. A coin toss decides who breaks, and both of you see who won it before the first shot. Resign or offer a draw from the Play panel if you want to end the rack without walking away mid-shot.
When the visit comes back to you, a chime marks the turn. If the match is in another tab, the bell repeats and the tab title flashes until you come back.
Signed in, Players you follow is in the Online part of the Play panel. Find players searches by display name and lists recent opponents. Follow someone and their row shows what they're doing — free, in a match, practising, or watching. When they're free and on your table, Challenge asks them for a rack. The offer goes only to them, and they can accept or leave it. If they're offline, Notify can send that challenge to their phone. If they're watching a match, Watch joins them.
An invite or a live match can be on another table — US 8-ball, UK 8-ball, 9-ball or 10-ball. The offer names which, and Switch & accept or Switch & play takes you there. Watch on a match at another table does the same. The number of players online counts every table on the site, and says how many are at the one you're on.
During a match you can chat. Quick replies under the box send a common line — nice shot, thanks, and so on — without typing, and a row of emoji sends a reaction on its own. If your opponent isn't signed in, chat can fill in a note asking them to; edit it or send it as it is. When the match ends the conversation stays on screen until you close it, so a share link doesn't vanish with the table. A rematch keeps the same thread; a new opponent starts a new one. Mute hides their messages for you; Report sends the conversation to a moderator and mutes them. Chat is filtered for abuse. Mute also remembers your preference for the next match.
People watching can clap. When they do, a note rises over the table. Mute on that note turns the sound and the hands off for the rest of this game. The note disappears on its own. The next game, the crowd is back.
Signed-in vs signed-in matches are rated. After the rack the summary shows what it did to your number. See Elo ratings below for how the ranking works, and what doesn't count.
You can also follow someone else's rack live, without taking a seat. See Watching matches.
While a rack is underway, the Play panel and the scoreboard show how long the match has run and how long the current shot has taken.
Pause in the Play panel puts a Solo, Computer, or Pass & Play rack away so you can come back to it. It waits until the balls have stopped, and it stays unavailable while a foul choice is still open. An online rack can't be paused this way.
What's waiting is listed under Game in progress — the mode, the score, and when you paused. This table keeps one paused rack for each mode. Resume restores the table, the score and the clocks, with the time you were away left out. Discard throws it away, and it is not added to recent games. Starting that mode again asks first, because the new rack replaces the paused one.
Accepting an online game while one of these is underway pauses it for you. The offer says so, and you resume it from the same list afterwards.
The Challenge panel has structured drills: pot sequences, spin requirements, run targets, clear-the-table puzzles. Each drill awards up to three stars — you get more stars by completing it with fewer assists. Three stars always requires path previews to be off, so they're the test that you've learnt the shot, not just followed a line.
Every challenge is timed. Some are time-limited — finish before the clock runs out or it counts as a fail. The rest are open-ended but your time is recorded, so a clean run with a fast clock climbs the overall rankings. Play steady first, chase the leaderboard once the shot is in your hands.
Browse them two ways. By type groups them into CueSim Challenges (a progression where each unlocks the next), Open Challenges (capstone drills available anytime), Community Challenges (challenges other players have built and shared) and My Challenges (the ones you've authored). By category regroups everything into content tags — training drills, fast clearances, against the clock, trickshots. Anything you can play, you can also build — see Creating challenges below.
You can watch a live online rack as it is played — the score, whose visit it is, and every shot — even if you arrive halfway through, or while a ball is still rolling. You don't take a seat, so nothing you do changes the match.
The intro menu, and Online in the Play panel, both list Matches in progress: who's playing, the score, and how many people are already watching. Press Watch on a row to sit in.
Follow a player from their profile and, when they're watching a match themselves, their row in the players list grows a Watch button so you can join the same one.
A match is only listed when both players are happy to be watched. Allow spectators, under Online in the Play panel, is on by default and remembered on this device. Turn it off for a private game — either player can, and that keeps the rack off the list and refuses anyone who tries to join.
A bar at the top reads Watching live. Clap cheers a shot — tap it, or hold for a run of applause. The players and the other viewers hear it. If someone else is clapping and you'd rather they weren't, Mute on the note over the table silences the crowd for the rest of this game — the sound and the hands. The note itself disappears. The next game, the crowd is back. Your own clap still plays. Leave, or Esc, puts your own table back the way you left it, including a rack you had under way.
The shot controls come off the screen. Power and spin stay as a readout of the stroke the player at the table is setting: you can see the aim, you can't change it. The camera opens on TV view, unless you were already on another fixed angle. Pick a different one from the camera panel and it stays for the rest of the match, including a rematch.
The scoreboard keeps the live score. Click a signed-in player's name to open their profile.
You don't have the chat box. When someone is watching, each player can tick Also show to everyone watching on a message, and those lines appear for you as a short note on screen. Anything they don't tick stays between the two of them.
A note says who won — a finished rack, a resignation, a timeout, someone leaving, or a draw. If they play again you stay for the next one. If they don't, the feed ends and you're back at your own table.
Online matches between two signed-in players are rated with Elo — a ranking number that goes up when you win and down when you lose. It is the same idea chess uses: beating a stronger opponent pays more than beating a weaker one, and losing to someone below you costs more than losing to someone above you.
Everyone starts at 1200. After each rated rack the summary shows your new number and how far it moved. You can also find every board you've played under Account → Rating, and the public standings on the leaderboard under Player ratings.
The system already expects the higher-rated player to win. When that happens, both numbers barely shift. An upset — or a draw against someone much stronger — moves them a lot. A draw between equals leaves both where they were.
Your first ten racks on a board move faster so the number finds your level in an evening rather than a season. After that it settles, and at the very top of the board a single result barely budges anyone. A result against someone still on those first ten racks counts for less on your side — their number is still a guess — but they still take the full swing, so a new player can climb quickly without rewriting a settled rating.
There is a separate rating for each game (8-ball on the US 9-foot or UK 7-foot table, 9-ball, 10-ball) and each assist level — No hints, Partial and Full paths. Playing with the paths drawn for you is a different skill from potting with none, so one number spanning both would describe neither.
You appear on the public ratings board after five rated matches on that board, against at least two different opponents. Until then you still have a rating — it just isn't ranked yet, so a handful of lucky racks, or a run against one familiar opponent, can't out-place a season of play. The public list only includes players who opted in via their leaderboard profile, same as high scores.
Your first three rated racks against the same opponent in a day count in full. After that they count for less: half for the next three, a quarter for the four after that, and nothing from the eleventh on, for both players. Rematches stay fun to play, but nobody can climb the board by beating the same account over and over.
You're not limited to the built-in drills — you can build your own and, if you like, publish them for everyone else to play. Open the Challenge panel, find My Challenges and press + Create challenge to open the Challenge Builder. (Authoring needs an account, so you can edit and sync your challenges across devices; playing other people's never does.)
The table is the editor. Drag balls where you want them, drop potted balls back on from the tray, and use Full rack or Empty table as a starting point. Snap to grid lands balls neatly on the spots and grid crossings. Choose which ball the cue is aimed at to start, and optionally let the player place the cue ball anywhere before their first shot.
This is what the challenge is testing. Choose one:
Modifiers turn a layout into a real test: force topspin-only or backspin-only, require a single uninterrupted run, require every pot in a sequence to land off one stroke, ban cushion contact, relax the group-assignment rule, set a shot clock, and decide what happens when a ball is potted (stay down for run-out practice, or bring balls back so a drill repeats cleanly). You can also tag the challenge with categories so it surfaces in the right groups of the Challenges tab.
Press Test play at any point to try the challenge on the live table before committing. When it plays the way you want, Save it — it lands in My Challenges, always available and never affecting the progression.
Tick Public — others can play to publish it. Public challenges show up in everyone's Community Challenges list, where players can rate them out of five and rack up a play count; as the author you get a Stats view of plays and ratings. Choose to be credited by your leaderboard name or stay anonymous. Either way, the Share link (🔗) copies a URL that opens the challenge straight onto the table for anyone you send it to — signed in or not. Shared and community challenges sit outside the CueSim progression and don't count toward the global leaderboard.
The Recommend button is the AI Recommender, and it is only on the practice table. Start a rack or a challenge and it goes away. Press it and the engine runs the real physics on a large pool of candidate shots, scores them on the balls they pot and the position they leave, and ranks the best lines. It's not a heuristic — it's literally simulating the table.
Lookahead in the bubble (1, 2 or 3 shots) controls search depth. Depth 1 is fast and good for "what's the best pot from here". Depth 3 builds run-out lines but takes longer.
The candidate list isn't just "the answer" — it's a set of strong shots ranked by score. Click any candidate to load its aim, power and spin into your sliders, then look at the path preview before you commit. Comparing two candidates side by side is the fastest way to learn why one leave is better than another.
Auto-play keeps recommending and shooting in a loop — watching it clear a difficult rack is a good way to see lines you wouldn't have spotted.
Signing in (via the Account tab) connects the simulator to your profile. It's optional — everything on the table works without an account, including live online matches.
For online play it's much better to be signed in. A guest is listed as Guest. Signed in, the scoreboard and the match offer use the display name you chose the first time you logged in. A rack between two signed-in players is rated, so when someone is looking for a game a signed-in player is offered it before a guest — people are more likely to sit down with you.
When you're signed in and looking for an opponent, guests are only invited once signed-in players have had first refusal. To play signed-in players only, turn off Allow guests under Online in the Play panel: guests are then never told about your search or paired with you. It's on by default and remembered on this device.
An account gives you:
Click a signed-in player's name — on the scoreboard, in recent games, under Account → Rating, in the players list, or on the leaderboard — to open their profile. You need to be signed in to open someone else's; if you aren't, the dialog offers Sign in. A guest, the computer, or a pass-and-play name has no profile to open.
It shows their rating on each board, and a game history with the score of every rated rack, whether or not that rack was posted to the leaderboard. Load more brings older games. Member since is the month and year the account was created. Follow is the same follow as in the players list. Your own profile doesn't offer it.
The photo starts as the one from the account you signed in with. Add photo or Change photo in Account replaces it — you crop it first. Show my photo is what other players see; turn it off to hide the photo. On your own profile, Hide photo does the same. A country flag sits beside names on the scoreboard, the profile and the leaderboard. Yours is detected for you, and you can change it to a country, International, or no flag, when you first sign in, under Account → Leaderboard, or on this device while you're a guest.
Medals you've earned are on the profile, and in the Medals panel — the trophy cabinet. A rack can unlock one as it ends, the cabinet shows how close the next one is, and they follow the account across devices.
Open Account from the main menu. There is no password.
Ideas, bugs and questions all have a door:
| Take shot | Space |
|---|---|
| Aim / Look / Object ball | A · L · O |
| Cycle camera view | C — Aim → Overhead → TV |
| Add / remove rest | R |
| Add / remove spider | Shift+R |
| Skip challenge intro | S — end the fly-over and start playing |
| Aim (Aim mode) | ← → — hold to accelerate |
| Elevation (Aim mode) | ↑ ↓ |
| Side spin | Shift+← → |
| Top / back spin | Shift+↑ ↓ |
| Move selected ball | ← → ↑ ↓ (when a ball is selected) |
| Power | + / − — hold to accelerate |
| Move camera (Look mode) | ← → ↑ ↓ |
| Orbit camera (Look mode) | Shift+← → ↑ ↓ |
| Undo / Redo | ⌘/Ctrl+Z · ⌘/Ctrl+Shift+Z · Ctrl+Y |
| Deselect ball / close dialog | Esc |