There is no better billiard lesson to the observant and serious amateur than match play by leading cuemen.
Mrs. King retains the American women's pool championship by defeating Miss Clearwater by the total score of 400 to 307.
Mr. Backhaus, the pianist, when introduced to Gray, after witnessing one of his displays, said "I was going to challenge you, but as I play on" ivories "and you with composition, that is impossible."
Until Gray makes breaks of eight and nine hundred points off the red with ivory balls, I shall cherish the belief that it is a far simpler task to maintain a long sequence of losing hazards or "in offs" with composition balls than with the natural article.—H. W. Stevenson, in Fry's Magazine.
When Stevenson suffered bereavement and had to stop play in the first Billiards Control championship, Inman declined to claim the game, and now Harverson has adopted the same course following upon Stevenson's illness during the tournament. Sportsmanship in billiards is the salt of the game.
Mr. H. A. O. Lonsdale stales that one side of an ivory ball is so much heavier than the other that off the light side the cue ball comes with a squarish angle, whereas it runs through 'the heavy side three-quarters. If this were so, the, game of billiards could not be played at all, and the ivory ball would be a worthless article. As a fact an ivory ball can be so true that, If dropped into a glass of water spot up, it will be found to retain its perpendicular at the bottom.
The Burroughes & Watts' miners' championship in the North of England is being played under Billiards Control Club rules. Home and home games are played, the preliminary rounds being 400 points up, the winner being the player who scores the largest aggregate in the two games.
The first prize to the winner of the combined event will be the title of champion of the North and £15; the runner-up will hold the title of champion of his county and receive £7 10s. A prize of £2 2s. will be given to the player making the highest break above 50, for which prize the two champions will not be eligible.
Your ideal billiard-room is quietly fitted up. In it there should be nothing to arrest the attention of the stranger entering for the first time. The table gives the keynote to the rest of the furniture. If the walls are panelled in stained wood, photographs and etchings might be framed into the panelling. The smoking-room being ousted from home after home; its denizens are being driven back and back like dying tribes of Red Indians before the paleface; and at last there Is nothing for the disinherited but to meet and smoke a sad cigar in dining-room or billiard-room.
In those retrograde establishments where the apartment still survives man should insist upon Oriental furnishings with thick carpets and deep armchairs and a repressed colour-scheme throughout,—Vanity Fair.
In the Soho Square tournament Reece achieved one of his great ambitions by beating Inman in a long game. Receiving 1,250 in 9,000, he won by 821.
A royal warrant of appointment has been granted by his Majesty the King to Messrs. Burroughes & Watts. Ltd, as billiard table makers to his Majesty.
What is the maximum speed at which 1,000 can be compiled on the billiard table? Lovejoy made one of his hundreds against Inman in six minutes. But will 1,000 points ever be scored within the hour?
Before taking to the "all red route" Gray, as a boy of twelve or thirteen, sustained a compound fracture of the left arm through a fall while jumping in the park, and as soon as it was set, as the arm was still rather stiff, the doctor recommended him to play billiards. That was how he began.
Messrs. Burroughes & Watts have decided, in view of the General Election and the near approach of Christmas, and owing to their Newcastle match room being engaged for several dates before the end of the year, not to commence with the local professional tournament until the New Year.
The Manchester Evening Chronicle, in its Billiard Notes of November 26, did The Billiard Monthly the honour of paraphrasing a great portion of our article by Mr. Duncan, barrister-at-law, on "Billiards and the Law." If The Billiard Monthly had been mentioned by the writer, the honour paid to us would have been enhanced.
Professionals and amateurs meet on the cricket field-; why not at the billiard table? It would be good for both and good for billiards. Of course, the amateur would derive no monetary profit from such encounters But he would derive great technical benefit. Indeed, it may be said that an amateur cannot improve beyond a certain point without serious play in long matches.
We are afraid that Gray is a little out in his billiard history. To an interviewer he said "I used to practise losing hazards into a guarded top pocket without touching a peg placed against one of the shoulders. I mastered it in the end, but It wasn't easy, and sometimes I used to bless—or otherwise—the very name of Kew." "Kew?" interrogated the interviewer. "Yes; the man who invented billiards," explained Gray. "Don't you remember?
William Kew lived in the middle of the sixteenth century, and was a pawnbroker. When trade was slack, he used to take down the three balls of his sign and push them about the counter with a yard-measure into boxes fixed at the sides. In time the idea of a fenced table with pockety suggested itself, and hence the game of bill-yards—from 'William' and the 'yard-measure' he used—while 'cue' is only another spelling of his surname, and 'cannons' are so-called because it was a clergyman who invented them."
Or has George Gray a keen sense of humour and enjoyed poking a little covert fun at his tormentor?