Why is it that some pool games count as rated games and some don't? How do i know which ones are which?

Answer 1

It's an option that the person chooses when they 'create' their table.

On the lobby window of the pool rooms, when you click on 'create table', you can decide if you want your games to be rated, thus, giving you a score. Each time you win, your score goes up. How many points you win depends on how high or low your opponent's score is compared to your score. If you have a high score and your opponent has a low score (i.e yours - 1400 - theirs: 1100), you won't get that many points.

As for finding out what tables are rated and which ones aren't, look on the lobby window where the numbered tables are (where you see the table numbers and the 'join' boxes). Look just below the 'join' buttons on each table and you'll see: Options: not rated (or rated); timed (or not timed), etc. They're in bold black letters, so you can't really miss them, though for some odd reason, when the game lobby windows come up on my computer, those letters telling the table options for each table are teeny bold letters. They weren't like that a while ago, but they've been that way for a while now, being bold, but teeny and hard to read - don't know why. I tried to find the reason, but nothing I did worked to change them back the way they were before. Oh well.

Answer 2

It tells you before you enter the room if it is rated or not. JUSt open your own room and check rated/not rated on the screen that pops up. You can even set a turn time limit.