BILLIARDS

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XL, Issue 18, 29 April 1908, Page 5

BILLIARDS

BY

AN EXPERT

LANDMARKS OF TSE GAME. Like the old county families, the game of billiards has its traditions fairly strongly marked. It quickly struck a sympathetic chord in the breasts of sporting aristocrats when first introduced into this country some time during the eighteenth century from France. The new game became most popular, and, as had been found necessary in the reign of James I. with regard to bowls, an Act of Parliament was passed prohibiting any journeymen, labourers, apprentices, or servants from playing under certain prescribed penalties. As a result, a comparative few, composed of the “bloods” about town and their entourage, monopolised billiards. The gaming clubs and the. best hotels and inns only could boast of a table. In those gambling days billiards came under the general ban, and not without reason. Pure enough in itself, it suffered by contamination; by being made the medium of the sharper and trickster; these associations clung more closely to the game than ivy to a tree. There was no shaking them off. Thus it came about that the mere mention of the word “billiards” caused the piously-minded and those professing so to be to lift their hands in lamentation at the sins and wickednesses of this world. For a game to have outlived such detracting influences and deeply-grounded prejudices must bespeak of its innate merits. There is none better nor more scientific. It provides a beautiful study, a mental recreation. and it may be set to serve a grand lesson in self-control. Yet only in the last few years have billiards and bil-liard-playing taken their proper place\in the forefront of our sports and pastimes. To go back into the mists of a century or so ago is to find London the hub of the game here in England. It had then had something like a fifty years career Billiard tables of the pocketed pattern had found their way to America before the War of Independence. High officials had transported them there; probably taken them from their town houses. The game was fairly well established in the fashionable circle. It is curious to reflect upon the difficulties of the wooden beds and list cushions, the square-headed mace which did duty to push the player’s ball up and down the table. They are reflected in the condensed character of the games played, varying from 7 points to 21 points up. The high-banked cushions were a source of certain failure

The old and the newer way of playing from the D when your opponent safely misses under the side cushion and the red ball is on the spot. The continuous lines show the movements of the cue-balls, and the intersected lines the run of the flayed object-balls.

when the cue-ball rested against them. In despite of all the drawbacks there was, even under these conditions, a certain magnetism about the play. It became the cult of the sporting fraternity. In due course there came the leather tips and the accompanying chalk, known as “twisting-chalk,’* which do duty today. These improvements advanced the cause of billiards in a remarkable degree. They led to a much higher standard of play, and the school of players, amateur and professional, upon whose teachings the base of the present-day game, in al! its ramifications, is set.

Piccadilly and the Haymarket, those lively haunts of the old days, first welcomed the billiard-table to London. There were big matches for big money stakes quite 100 years ago, when bejewelled ladies and their gallants wagered their guineas by the thousands. The Americans vied with us at the pocket game, and more than one expert player made the perilous Atlantic passage to try conclusions with our best. By gradual degrees the provinces became imbued with a fondness for the board of green cloth. In this wise Brighton and Manchester, towns which figure largely in billiard history, managed in due course to supplant London for a time as the headquarters of the game. When Brighton was at the height of its popularity, Jonathan Kentfield, the father of billiards, and the first recognised champion, made his claim good to bo considered the first exponent in the land. He has left behind a work that, tells how intimately he knew his art. Billiards owes much to him, as he invented the slate bed and rubbered cushions, improvements which were taken up and manufactured by Messrs. Thurston and Co., now some seventy years ago. After a twenty odd years' hold on the chain pionship, Kentfield resigned the title to John Roberts, a player of remarkable native ability, who gave the Lancashire city a connection with first-class billiards which had since been kept in line by successive generations of players.

In the course of a few years billiards reverted to London as its chief centre, and it has remained there ever since, notwithstanding many high provincial in d’ucements. It was in Saville House,

Leicester-square, on the site now occupied by the Empire Theatre, that John Roberts, sen., displayed his talents, and where his son, John Roberts, jun., later destined to be the leading figure in all practical billiards, learned to play his inimitable game. The father was all

brilliancy and dash, with a curious partiality for knocking the balls off the table, a performance he could accomplish at will. His play was redolent of double, strength forcing strokes, made in the most nonchalant and surpisingly accurate fashion. In his earlier years John Roberts, jun., betrayed the same characteristics. He had ail the freedom and power of cue possessed by his father. They had probably come to him by the force of good example. But the younger John had to temper his stroke-power and revise his methods before he became an outstandingly great player. His eyes must have been widely opened at the delicacy of touch, the screw effects gained by those nicky little strokes so artistically rendered by William Cook, the young man who succeeded in beating old John Roberts for the championship in a famous match in the year 1870. This was played at the St. .lames’s Hall, Piccadilly, which for several subsequent, seasons was the selected battle-ground for all the leading matches. The Guildhall Tavern, in the City, Gatti’s Restaurant, in Villiers-stroct, Strand, and the Royal Aquarium. Westminster, became, in their turn, the resort of the great players. Matches and tournaments, pool and pyramids (the groat round games of those days), wore contested by the chief professionals. There is a fund of anecdote connected with many of the contests. The evolution of many set strokes, which now figure in the midst of break arrangements, and are passed over as ranking in the commonplace. can be traced to the seventies and early eighties, when a match of HMM) up once a month in the season was

a-s much as a professional could expect. Is it to be wondered at, therefore, that the nicely-regulated laws of supply and demand compelled him, in those times, to look to pool and pyramids as a source of income? But the professional of that era and the up-to-date professor of the gentle art of billiards are very distinct personalities. As befits their exceptional abilities, the leading players to-day can

command engagements, all of which extend over a week or two weeks, for seven months out of the twelve. There are the recognised halls for exhibition and very sternly-contested match play. To John Roberts must be acorded the credit of raising billiards to its present high place in the public eye as a form of refined entertainment. His tenancy of the old Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, where his most notable triumphs were achieved, did a world o fgood for the game. It served as object lesson in what might be done. Messrs Thurston and Co. were the first to realise the possibilities of this, and they erected the splendidly-appoint-ed G"and iHa.il in Luicestier Square. Messrs Burrouglies and Watts followed this example by converting part of their old-established premises at Soho-square into a Grand Salon, where the splendidly fought-out tournament games are conducted. Then Messrs Cox and Yeman, of 184, Brompton-road, fell into line, and

built the comfortable saloon annexed to their premises. London leads the world in the way of its billiard halls.. A reminiscent mood has led me into putting forward a couple of diagrams of shots that were once in favour, but which the experience of long familiarity has expunged from the list of those known as sound, and therefore profitable undertakings. There is the one-time sparklingly attractive, but uncertain, screw losing hazard from the red ball when it lies on the billiard spot, and the cueball is in hand. This was all the rage, the. despairing hope of the many and the weakness of most. No self-respect-ing billiardist. now attempts this strong screw stroke; yet an an occasional reminder by some desperate player that it is still a factor to be reckoned with revives old memories. The methods of opening the game, and particularly as concerns those more or less trappy little misses under the side cushions, also comUnend themselves. The run-through shot with strong “side,” once the most common stroke in this connection, is now banned, as. apart from its scoring detfccts, it inevitably leaves the opponents ball down by the red, providing too nice a leave to permit of its being regularly in. The better stroke is the thin cannon, taking the object white thinly (as on the left side of the exemplary diagram) on its left side. This has become the recognised means of dealing with the position, ls>th as an aggressive and defensive shot.