I am an old billiard player, but not too old to read and value what is published in The Billiard Monthly—not too old to profit by the valuable and helpful" Tips "or to practice carefully in accordance with the advice given in the useful Questions and Answers page month by month.
Yet I find among younger players very few who will even read the monthly parts, and I often feel astonished to watch the form that young men, who cannot take the trouble to learn their game, display when matched against a conscientious student of its difficulties. They have, some of them, a good eye, handle their cues with considerable skill, do individual shots accurately in so far as their desire to gain a pocket or make a cannon is concerned. They have also a general idea of the run of their first object ball after it is struck, but this sums up their proficiency. Few of such players think for a moment where the object ball or cannon ball will stop.
They play the easiest game, and always take a half-ball stroke to secure the pocket or cannon, whereas a thinner or thicker impact might leave a better after position. They will not risk the loss of their stroke, if they ever even think about the next stroke at all.
Yet the balls very often run kindly for them and corners of pockets, kisses, and even faulty strength may favour them throughout the whole evening. They may find an easy shot almost even time they go to the table and I am often amused to note their expression of self-satisfaction as they glance at the goodly position left for them. Watching games like this, I have noted that the more careful player —the young fellow who is practising his shots carefully with special attention to the run of the balls for the next stroke and who is learning the difficulties of the game as they must be learnt—cannot get on to his game at all, whereas the careless player has often the added luck of the run of the balls when he breaks down. The student player, time after time, finds a difficult, if not impossible, stroke to play, and any chance of leaving something for the next position is practically impossible to him. Many of your readers must have had my own experience in noting the run of the balls in favour of the careless player and against the student of the game.
I wonder if it ever strikes these favoured players that every stroke they play from which a good position is accidentally left is to that extent just as much a fluke as is an accidental run in, pot, or cannon. If this does not appeal to them it is nevertheless a fact.
That a little inaccuracy in the leave which yields a better position than that which was hoped for is anything in the nature of a fluke I am far from suggesting. Such result is due to the good fortune which also favours carefulness.
But I draw a hard and fast line between the good fortune of a thinker and that of a non-thinker, whose only care is for the immediate stroke. The good fortune of the latter is pure fluke and nothing better.
Therefore, let not the student of the game lose heart. He will meet and be beaten by many a good fellow who like best to play their game without study of its difficulties and who would not care if they were generally recognised as flukers all round the game. But these know nothing of the pleasure which is felt by the student who brings off a carefully thought-out little break, and is conscious that each stroke has been well and truly played until the mistake was made which ended the innings. On the other hand the happy-go-lucky player enjoys his game in his own way, and enjoyment is, after all, the chief object in a game of billiards.