diff --git a/test/studies/shootout/binary-trees/binarytrees-pool.execenv b/test/studies/shootout/binary-trees/binarytrees-pool.execenv
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..ba856108a5aa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/test/studies/shootout/binary-trees/binarytrees-pool.execenv
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+# this value has been shown to cause the most problems for this test
+CHPL_RT_NUM_THREADS_PER_LOCALE=3