SHOWMEN CHARGED

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12483, 26 June 1926, Page 5

SHOWMEN CHARGED

BOX BALL AND SKI ALLEY “FROM POCKETS OF FOOLISH” JUDGED GAMES OF SKILL Per Press Association. AUCKLAND, June 25. “It seems to me that tho games have just that degree of skill that takes them out of the Act,” said Mr J. W. Poynton, S.M., in the Police Court, when lie dismissed charges brought by the police against Maurice Darling, frank de Lyall, and James McCoridndale, showmen, who had stalls at the Winter Show, the three being charged with playing in a public place a game of chance known as “box ball,” and McCorkindale being further charged with playing, “ski alley,” another game of chance. Tho defence was that the games were games of skill and not of chance. After describing in detail the manner in which the games were played, the magistrate continued that the law as to such games is an unsatisfactory one. A lot of decisions rule that any game with skill in it, however small, is not a game of chance and another, equally weighty, that even if there is skill in the game, if the element of chance enters largely into it it is not a game of skill. In both these games the si ill to be possibly acquired is small. A tall man with long arms in playing “box ball” may reach to within a few inches of the edge of the holes, and with a little practice should be able to drop a ball into any desired pocket, while a short person or child is at a serious disadvantage in this respect. His eyes, too, being low, he would have a difficulty in seeing the numbers of the pockets. In “ski alley” there is also very little skill. At the top of the table where the ball drops over tlio edge of the incline into the pockets the green baize is thicker than in the other parts of the table and this ter ds to force the ball hack. In such a case another throw of a ball is granted. A skilled player would play with just sufficient force to send the ball over the edge, and with practice would acquire a certain skill in placing the balls into the selected holes, but not much. If the law is to he altered, and it certainly should be in the ir.ferests of our children, the test ought to be not as at present. Is there any skill in the game if played by practised players? But is it a game of chance to those who indulge in it and from whose pockets the funds are extracted to keep it going ? The magistrate concluded with tho words of Mi Justice Edward, regarding a case which he tried. “It is a species of amusement designed to extract small sums of money from tho pockets of flic foolish. Principally tho young and foolish who are visitors to racecourses and ether places of public amusement. It docs more than empty their pockets, it innoculatcs such foolish persons and children with tho fever of gambling, a vice already too prevalent in the community.”