A BILLIARDS CONTROVERSY

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 85, 1 July 1927, Page 7

A BILLIARDS CONTROVERSY

PENDULUM CANNON TAKES SOME DOING—NOT A “JAM” STROKE The English billiards authorities decided the other day to take action to deal with the “pendulum” cannon, the most discussed stroke in the game today. So much controversy has raged round the stroke that its actual technique is but hazily understood. An illuminating critique is given by the editor of the “Billiard Player,” in a recent issue. Auckland devotees of the green cloth should find the following description of interest: To describe the stroke by which T. Reece has scored so many thousand points against M. Inman and A. F. Peall as a “jam” stroke is to do Reece’s feat scam: justice. Standard balls in the position to which Reece guided them when near the right top corner cannot be “jammed” on a standard table. The slightest inaccuracy of contact is sufficient to drop one of the two balls into the pocket, and, unless they are kept at, or returned to, the exact mother position, i.e., with the centres of both of them in absolutely the same relation to the fall of the pocket, a winning hazard is made, and the position is lost. Let anyone—amateur or professional —who considers that the stroke is that can easily lead to a thousand—or, for that matter, a hundred—break, put up the balls and try it for himself. He will quickly find, unless he is a master of recovery at close range, that one of two things is constantly in danger of happening. Uneven pressure will be exercised upon the balls, thus shifting them slightly, or he will send the cue ball a shade too far or not quite far enough. In the former case, he will have one ball nearer to the fall of the pocket than the other, and in the latter case he will designedly have to play unequally in order to restore the erring object ball to its former position. The only perfectly safe stroke is that in which, at the smallest practicable range, the player just brushes both balls with the cue ball, which should, in turn, bp left after each cannon in the same relative position below, say, the side cushion, as it was when lying against the top cushion. Contact and touch alike have to be varied to restore the exact equilibrium of the balls. But the outstanding problem in connection with the stroke is the obtaining of the position tlmt makes the sequence possible. Not once in ten thousand times is that position to be gained by accident.' Nor was it so with Reece at Thurston’s. The balls may have been thereabouts, but they had to be guided there, and there were three with which to deal.