BILLIARDS

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18190, 24 June 1927, Page 9

BILLIARDS

ITEMS OF INTEREST FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD. OBJECT BALL IN PENDULUM CANNON. By HACKA. Experts in Australia are still at variance as to the exact position into which Reece worked the object balls in making his now famous pendulum cannon. Some maintain that the balls were not touching, but almost so. . . . Many who saw the play say the balls were “jammed” in a top pocket, though one critic does not agree that this is an apt description of the position. . It is evident they were not lightly jammed, but touching each other, whilst lying against the top and side cushions respectively. They would be shifted from position by unequal pressure exercised on them by the cue ball. Comment on the stroke in the latest English mail is interesting, and will serve to clear the atmosphere. “Hazard,” the noted billiards writer, in London “S.L. and S.” sa3's: —“The new stroke created a tremendous stir, but the simplicity of it—apart from the skill it demands in treatment—makes me wonder why the idea has lain dormant since the Lovejov stroke was legislated out of existence 20 years ago. With all three balls fairly dose to each other, a cannon by the expedience of playing on to a cushion and thereafter making contact with the two object balls has never been outside the radius of a player with Reece’s touch. “Although founded on the old and notorious cradle cannon, Reece’s new movement demands much more expert treatment. In the latter instance, each of the object balls rested against the ‘points’ of the cushions guarding a corner pocket, with the cue ball equidistant between the two objects, but with rooYn for the cue ball to get through into the pocket. “In the new movement the object balls are steered into the jaws of the. pocket until they become ‘jammed,’ and the cannon made by brushing across the face of the two objects from below top and side cushions alternate13'. When ticking off direct cannons, Reece worked from extremely close range, but preparatory to playing the cushion shot he had to steer the cue ball a foot or more away from the object nearest him. This was essential, as from the original position it was quite impossible to strike a cushion

before making contact with the objects. Reece invariably accomplished this amazing movement with the exact pace necessary to take the cue ball into its original position for a continuance of the direct cannons.” Mr A. Stanley Thorn, secretary of the Billiards Association and Control Council, referred to Reece as “getting the object balls jammed in the top right-hand pocket.” “Balls Cannot bo Jammed.” In the May issue of the “Billiard Player” the editor comments:— To describe the stroke by which T. Reece has scored so many thousand paints against M. Inman and A. F. Peall as a “jam” stroke is to do Reece’s feat scant justice. Standard balls in the position to which Reece guided them when near the right top corner cannot be “jammed” on a standard table (all Reece’s big breaks were made upon a Thurston standard table, fitted with “Stanfast” cushions.—“ Cannon.”) 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 1 position is lost. bet anyone—amateur or professional —who considers that the stroke is one 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, be 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 that makes the sequence possible. Not once in ten thousand times is that position