Ploidy and "Pooled" for the Haplotype Caller

Hello everyone,

I was reading the haplotype caller documentation and noticed the "--sample_ploidy/-ploidy" flag. The description reads "Ploidy (number of chromosomes) per sample. For pooled data, set to (Number of samples in each pool * Sample Ploidy)."

My question is, what exactly is a pooled experiment? Is it when I have multiple samples? I have separate files for each of my 8 samples and the organism only has one chromosome. So would the number I set be 8*1? Or is this pooled number for multiple samples within a file, and in which case, I would specify 1 instead of 8.

Thanks!
Raymosrunerx