Solid black with a white numbered circle, the eight ball is the visual and symbolic center of the traditional set. Although physically a solid-colored ball, it belongs to neither player’s group in eight-ball. It waits apart, legally pocketed only after a player has cleared the table of the appropriate solids or stripes.

This arrangement has, understandably, fostered a certain resentment: everyone spends most of the game avoiding it, hiding from it, or complaining that it is in the way—then suddenly it becomes the most important object in the room. The eight has made peace with this by remembering that an early trip to a pocket can completely ruin someone’s entire evening.