Pool

A bar pool table in magenta light, a shot lined up on the cue ball and the balls spread along the table. Pool is back in the bars, on the evidence of one official screenshot.

The press screenshot is taken at table height and holds the whole bar. At the near rail a man leans in over the table with his cue lined up on the cue ball, a chain at his neck, a watch on the bridging wrist and a skull tattoo on the upper arm. His sleeveless vest is printed Key Lento in script under a pair of palms; in the magenta light that also lights the rail, the vest’s own colour cannot be told. Beyond the cue ball sit the yellow 1, a blue ball further along, and the black 8 against the far cushion.

Cal Hampton stands across the table in a pastel geometric shirt, glasses and moustache, watching the shot with a can in his left hand and a second cue upright in his right. Further back, a woman in a straw hat and a lotus-print top carries an iguana over her shoulders, a small gold crown on its head, with a man in a dark red cap beside her and two red cans between them. String lights run above them, a stained-glass lamp hangs further back, a mounted fish sits high on the wall, and a television shows a giant open-jawed alligator towering over people on a path. The walls are papered with signs and plates, and a carved wooden sign at the top right reads JOE SHORTS BLAS before it runs out of the frame.

A shot lined up on the cue ball is the giveaway that the table is meant to be played rather than walked past. Whether it is a full game with its own aiming interface, and whether money changes hands, the frame does not show. The series has been here before: pool was a bar game in GTA San Andreas and GTA 4, and GTA 5 dropped it while keeping darts, golf and tennis. One screenshot does not say how deep it goes this time.

Until 22 September 2026 this page read the vest as Key Lerito and called it lilac, stood a rack of cues against the wall and put the woman at the bar: the vest reads Key Lento, its colour cannot be told in the magenta light, and the woman stands behind the far rail. Until 24 September it put the upright cue in the player’s free hand and had the woman taking a can from the man in the cap. The player has both hands on his own cue, one at the butt and one bridging; the upright cue is in Cal Hampton’s right hand; and the frame shows two cans between the woman and the man, not which way either is going.

How to recognise it

• A bar pool table with a lit rail
• A cue lined up on the cue ball, with the yellow 1 beyond it
• Cal Hampton across the table with a can in one hand and an upright cue in the other
• A woman with an iguana over her shoulders behind the far rail
• A television showing a giant open-jawed alligator
• Wooden beams and bulb-framed signs in the bar

The frame it comes from

The frame is a still from the official Press pack, which carries no timecode. It is 3840 by 2160, and the subject occupies 3840 by 2160 of it. Also in it: the Joe Shorts sign and Cal Hampton.

How this was measured

These figures come from the dataset, not from the prose above. We measure everything and claim what counts. How we work

What we still do not know

• Whether pool is playable and whether it has an aiming interface
• Whether you can bet on a frame, as you could at the tables in GTA San Andreas
• Which bar this is, and whether the carved JOE SHORTS sign is its name
• Who the player at the near rail is; the press material names only Cal Hampton
• Whether darts and other bar games return as well