In billiard playing, as in most other pursuits, a medium course is usually the safest and best, resort to something less or more than this golden mean being made as necessity or expediency dictates.
The great essential in billiard playing is simplification of the game, whereas man) amateurs seem to revel in making the game difficult. To such players a little concentrated practice with three strengths and three contacts only would prove extremely beneficial.
For the three contacts the aim should be taken (1) at the edge of the object ball, (2) half an inch inside the edge, and (3) half an inch outside the edge. For the three strengths, the ball should be struck from the centre baulk spot (1) three table lengths, (2) two table lengths, and (3) four table lengths. A good player could make good and frequent breaks with these three contacts and strengths alone, and without resort to side or screw.
Anyone watching a professional at work can hardly fail to notice what a large proportion of his shots are plain halfball strokes and how rarely, comparatively, the strength employed seems to vary. That is, indeed, precisely what the professional is seeking to bring about. It is the way to score freely and with the smallest expenditure of physical and mental energy.
Successful billiard players, whether professional or amateur, are usually men of quick observation and retentive memory. Things happen while they are practising and they note and remember these things. Whether it is a good result or a bad result that comes off they do not accept it blindly, but, they ask themselves why it occurred and thenceforth do the successful stroke in the same way and the failure in a different way.
At a very early stage of their practice they discover that a half-ball contact drives the object ball along a certain course (which thenceforth becomes to them the half-ball potting course), that a three-quarter ball contact drives it to one side of this always remembered course, and that a quarter ball contact cuts it to the other side of such course.
They note, furthermore, that with the quarter-ball contact the object ball takes less momentum out of the cue ball than it receives from it and with the three-quarter ball contact more. With the half-ball contact they note that the momentum of the two balls after impact is equal.
In the same way they are not slow to perceive that every cushion contact takes a certain fixed amount of momentum out of a ball, whether cue or object ball, and that this sacrifice of momentum is less at a wide angle with the cushion and more at an acute angle. As they never play an in-off before mentally allocating to the object ball its next approximate position, or a pot without pre-arranging the stopping station of the cue ball, they know whether cushions, unintended pockets, baulk line, or kiss balls lie in the mapped-out course, and, if they do, vary the strength or contact, or both, in such a way as to avoid threatened obstacles.
All this sounds terribly difficult and complicated, but in reality it is neither, and the best way to approach the study of the game of billiards is to saturate one's mind with the two outstanding facts that, on the two squares of which the table is composed, results mathematically follow execution, and that there is, in the size of the pockets in their relation to the balls and of the balls in their relation to each other, a reasonable margin for error.
Notwithstanding much that has been written, and is still being written, to the contrary, microscopical exactness is not called for in billiards. Even in potting, when the object ball is at some distance from a pocket and the pocket is a blind one, there is a certain margin for inaccuracy unless the balls are travelling at some speed, and in in-offs there is very considerable margin alike as regards the pocket and the playable area in which to leave the object ball.
The course of practice that we would advise for a study of, and familiarity with, the three main billiard strengths and contacts is taken from baulk, with the object ball, in the first instance, on the centre spot of the table. The purpose here is to bring the object ball into middle-pocket position and before it reaches there it has to meet with, and overcome, the resistance of all three upper cushions at tolerably acute angles. So a free swinging stroke will be required.
To state, arbitrarily, that this stroke is a No. 3 (or four table length) stroke might be a delusion, as so much depends upon the exact manner in which the cue is delivered. If the cue ball is swept away with a nice free swing—like unto that of a driver swing at golf—there is no feeling whatever akin to that of" forcing, or "pressing."
Indeed, there is no stroke in billiards where this feeling of "flogging" the ball should make itself felt. Flogging takes the life out of a ball as it does out of a horse. What is required is the true handling of the cue or reins.
But what we want the reader chiefly to note with regard to this middle-pocket spot stroke is that if, as the result, the hazard into the top pocket is made and the object ball is brought nicely below the centre of the table, due attention to one or other of the three standard contacts and strengths will, in all probability, suffice to keep it there. If a little too low down for the half-ball No. 2 strength stroke, the three-quarter contact No. 1 strength stroke should suffice, or if a little too high up the quarter contact No. 3 strength stroke should do what is required. Dead slow or forcing strengths, respectively below or above the three standard strengths, may occasionally have to be resorted to, just as, with the object ball left in the upper half of the table, strength with the half-ball contact may have to be increased to compensate for two-cushion resistances or to bring a ball in and out of baulk, or decreased to effect the latter purpose in another way.
It may also be necessary to retain position when operating below the middle pockets by contacts above, below, or intermediate with the three standards. But this will only be necessitated by faulty treatment of the simpler strokes specified, which should be returned to as quickly as possible, not more by reason of their simplicity than of their safety.
The parting word of advice that we should like to give to the student is: Practise definite strengths according to table lengths; observe what strengths are required at given contacts and positions to bring the object ball back and round; identify and memorize these strengths by their numbers and take care always to employ them when similar conditions arise.