Terms of Service
33 Pool is run by Taurus Media Network LLC. These terms cover 33pool.com, the 33 Pool app, and the ladders and matches we run. Signing in means you accept them.
They are written to be read. Where something matters -- what happens to your money, what happens to a stream of your match, what happens when two players disagree about a score -- it is said plainly instead of buried.
Who can play
You must be 16 or over.
One account per person. A second account created to sit lower on the ladder is the most common kind of cheating here, and it is grounds for closing both.
You sign in with Kick, and you are responsible for what happens under your account. If somebody else can get into your Kick account, they can get into your 33 Pool account.
The display name you choose is seen by every other player and read out on streams. Names that impersonate somebody else, or that exist to be offensive, will be changed.
Free play and memberships
Casual boards, watching, messages, ratings and match history are free. Ranked matchmaking is what a membership is for. What each tier includes is on the membership page, and it can change from season to season.
A membership is billed by Stripe on the cycle you chose and renews until you cancel. You can cancel any time. You keep access until the end of the period you have already paid for, and we do not refund part of a period. After you cancel we do not bill you again.
If you are in the UK or the EEA you have 14 days from purchase to change your mind and be refunded -- unless you have played ranked matches in that time. Starting to use it is what ends that right, and that is the law rather than our rule.
Prices can change. An existing membership keeps its price until its next renewal, and we will tell you before that renewal happens.
Codes we issue -- beta keys, passes, comps -- do what the code says for as long as it says. They are not transferable and not refundable.
Ranked play is streamed
Ranked matches are played on stream. To play ranked you connect your Kick channel, and the app broadcasts to it: with your permission it reads your stream key so you never have to paste one, and it sets your stream title when a match starts.
Your channel is yours, and Kick's terms apply to it as much as ours do. A ban on Kick is between you and Kick, but it will stop you playing ranked here.
You keep everything you own in your own stream. By playing ranked you give us permission to link it, embed it, clip it, and use those clips to show people what 33 Pool is -- on our site, in the app, and on our own channels. That permission is non-exclusive, it does not stop you doing anything with your own footage, and you can ask us to stop using a particular clip.
Do not put anything in a ranked stream you would not want linked from a public match page. The whole match is watchable, and other players and casters can point at moments in it.
Scoring, and disagreeing about it
You keep your own score. You mark what you pocketed, your opponent confirms it, and play moves on. That is faster than any alternative and it depends on both of you being straight about it.
If your opponent's score is wrong, dispute it during the match rather than complaining after it. A dispute comes to us with the stream behind it, and we can correct a score, void a game, or mark an account for scoring dishonestly. A pattern of that is grounds for suspension.
Ratings, ladder positions and season standings are calculated by us. We may recalculate or correct them after a void, a dispute or a bug. A correction is not a punishment and does not mean you did anything wrong.
Seasons start, pause and finish when we say. A season's ladders, its length and its rules are published when it opens, and its standings become final when it closes.
If you abandon a match, your opponent gets the win and the disconnect goes on your record. Leaving to protect a Rating is cheating rather than bad luck.
Fair play
These get an account suspended or removed:
- Playing on more than one account, or playing on somebody else's.
- Cheating at scoring: claiming balls you did not pocket, confirming a score you know is wrong, or agreeing a result with your opponent that neither of you played.
- Arranging results, trading wins, or farming Rating with a partner.
- Interfering with the app, the live scoring service, or another player's session.
- Abuse, threats, slurs, harassment or sexual content aimed at another player -- in messages, on a board, or on your stream while you are playing here.
- Anything illegal, and anything that puts a minor at risk.
Suspension, and arguing with it
We can suspend or close an account when we find any of the above, and we do not have to wait for a season to end to do it. Where we can, we tell you what we found.
If you think we have it wrong, email aaron@33pool.com and a person will look again. We will not restore a Rating that was gained by cheating, and we will not refund a membership on an account closed for it.
Casual boards and other people's names
A casual board is for a night of games in a room together, and you type the names yourself. Only put a name on a board if the person at the table is happy to see it on a screen -- boards can be shared with a code and shown on a stream overlay. A first name is plenty. If somebody asks you to take their name off, take it off.
Messages, ratings and reports
Messages are for arranging games and saying good game.
Rate people on how they actually played. Do not rate somebody down for beating you, and do not organise ratings against a player. We void ratings we find to be retaliatory, and we can remove a message while keeping a copy of it as evidence.
Report what you would want reported about you. Filing reports you know to be false is itself grounds for action.
Teams
A team is run by whoever created it. A captain can invite, remove and set a lineup, and a member can leave whenever they like.
Team results belong to the team's record rather than to one player, and they stay there after somebody leaves. If everybody leaves, the team closes and its matches stay on the ladder.
Prizes
Where a season or an event has a prize, its rules are published with it: who is eligible, what wins, and when it is paid.
In every case you have to be in good standing. An account under an open integrity finding is not paid until the finding is resolved, and an account closed for cheating is not paid at all.
What we promise, and what we do not
We run this as well as we can. We do not promise it will never be down. A match can be interrupted by our servers, by Kick, or by your own connection.
When our side breaks a match we will put right what we can -- void the game, correct a Rating -- and that is the remedy. We do not pay compensation for a lost match, a lost stream or a lost Rating.
We do not promise the ladder runs forever. If we close a season, a ladder, a format or the whole service, we will say so beforehand, and we will not take money for a period we already know we will not deliver.
Nothing here limits our liability for anything the law does not allow us to limit.
Closing your account
You can close your account yourself, from the app or the website. What happens next depends on whether you are paying us.
If you do not have a membership, the account is deleted there and then. What that destroys and what it keeps is set out in the privacy policy; the short version is that your personal details go and the match record stays.
If you do have a membership, we do not delete it that day. Your membership is billed by Stripe on its own schedule, closing a 33 Pool account does not stop it, and deleting you immediately would take away the only login that can cancel it. So the account is switched off instead: off the ladder, out of matchmaking, and nobody can message or invite you. Nothing is erased. Cancel the membership, and once it actually ends we delete the account for good.
Until that happens you can have it back. Sign in on the app and everything returns exactly as it was, and the deletion is cancelled. Signing in on the website will not bring it back -- the website is where you go to deal with billing, and cancelling a membership should not quietly undo the thing you asked for on the way to doing it.
If you never cancel, nothing happens. The account stays switched off, and we do not delete something you are still paying for.
Either way the display name you played under stays on the leaderboards and in your opponents' match history, because that record belongs to them as much as to you.
When you close your account we ask why. Answering is optional and it changes nothing about what happens.
Our side of it
33 Pool, 33 Rotation, Phoenix Ladder and our logos are ours. So are the app, the site, the ladders and the format.
You may not copy the service, take it apart to rebuild it, scrape it, or run automated clients against it. An API key we issue is yours alone, and we can revoke it.
You may of course talk about 33 Pool, post your own clips, and stream your own matches. That is rather the point.
Other people's services
Kick, Stripe, and Apple's and Google's app stores each have their own terms, and using them here means agreeing to theirs alongside ours. When one of them changes a permission, an API or a rule, we may have to change how 33 Pool works in response.
Changes to these terms
We version these terms, and we record which version you accepted and when. When what they say about your account, your money or your conduct changes, we will ask you to accept the new version. Carrying on playing after a change means you accept it.
Where a dispute goes
These terms are governed by the law of the State of Nevada, and any dispute goes to the state or federal courts sitting in Nevada. If you are a consumer somewhere whose law gives you the right to bring a claim locally, that right stands.
Contact
aaron@33pool.com.
If anything in here does not match what the app actually does, tell us. We would rather fix the mismatch than win an argument about it.
