If you've ever played with one of those coin vortex things you may have tried to hit one of the circling coins with another coin to see if you could knock it off its path and directly into the hole at the bottom. That's the principal here.

The goal is to use the cue ball to hit one of your moving balls off its course and into the hole at the bottom before it hits a series of holes above the bottom hole through which it exits the table and is recycled back onto the cone at the top. The holes above the bottom hole are arranged such that the ball will exit horizontally through these vertically arranged holes if allowed to continue on their circling path.

If you do manage to hit your moving ball such that it breaks from its orbital path and drops into the bottom hole, your cue ball would obviously follow it. The cue ball is then sorted by a standard cue ball separation mechanism where it is returned for the next shot. Likewise if you miss and your cue ball goes directly into the hole.

To start the game, you'd drop the balls into a hopper where they are randomly shot out establishing a pattern of swirling balls that's different each time.

Although the balls are in movement, their relationship to one another remains the same through the game until they are hit by one of the players, either hard enough and at the right angle to knock it into the bottom hole or just hit so that it changes its orbital path.

The top lip of the vortex would extend into a flattened round table from which you'd launch your cue ball with a standard pool cue stick. So you'd pick one of the circling balls, calculate your intersect path, wait till the ball you wanted got to where you think you could hit it at the right angle and shoot. Of course you risk hitting the other players balls and knocking them in just as with a regular pool game so you'd be playing pool in 4 dimensions as opposed to regular pool only being played in 2 dimensions.
-- doctorremulac3, Jun 18 2016

Like this only with balls https://www.youtube...watch?v=h6itJ1GkTqI
Which you try to knock off course to get them into the hole at the bottom [doctorremulac3, Jun 18 2016]

//Like this only with balls//. Marked for Tagline.
-- AusCan531, Jun 18 2016


I'd try this game.

// Although the balls are in movement, their relationship to one another remains the same through the game //

How do you overcome frictional and aerodynamic losses?
-- notexactly, Jul 14 2016


You wouldn't, but it wouldn't be very important. Their spacing between each other would still remain about the same.
-- doctorremulac3, Jul 14 2016



random, halfbakery