In billiard tournaments the man who has, allowing for the handicap, scored the most points, is not always declared the winner. This happens, also, in other games and apart from sport altogether. It is possible, for example, for a majority of members to be sent to the House of Commons while representing an actual minority of the electors of the kingdom. This could, indeed, hardly be prevented under the constituency system, but in sport the conditions are different.
Where single matches of any kind are in question the necessary arrangements for securing an absolutely fair test of superiority are simple, and the only unsatisfactory element is that of pure luck, which must always prevail in a greater or lesser degree. The better player, in a single short or long game, may have no luck and score nothing by flukes.
The inferior player may have all the luck and make frequent flukes. These occurrences, however, are episodal and comparatively infrequent, and in the great majority of cases the better player during the match, allowing for the handicap, wins on the simple test of points.
In tournaments it is different, and this has been especially noticeable in billiards. First there was the knock-out, than which nothing could well have been less fair. One defeat, no matter under what exceptional conditions, and all was over. Then came the American system—a distinct advance along both scientific and fair lines, but still unsatisfactory.
Each player might meet each other player and finally one would be adjudged the winner of most heats. And yet he might have been beaten by wider margins than he had himself conquered by. In last year's Soho Square tournament, for example, Harverson scored more points than Reece, whereas Reece won four heats to the two won by Harverson, and took third place to Harverson's fourth Now an effort is to be made in the tournament—as fully announced on the back page of this issue—to approximate more nearly to the test of merit according to actual points scored, whilst at the same time ensuring that the whole of the heats shall be briskly and keenly contested from start to finish. Thus the player who reaches his proper proportion of points on the Wednesday evening in any given week will be accredited with two points, and the winner of the heat with three points (or five, if also half-way through on the Wednesday).
It is true that, under this system, the winner of most heats may not be declared the winner of the tournament, and it is even possible that he may not secure the greatest number of proportional points. But the principle is one that has been applied with success to county cricket and there is no reason why it should not prove equally satisfactory when applied to billiards.
The players themselves are said to be keenly interested in the change, and one of them is quoted by The Sporting Life as criticizing the scheme thus:—"There are eight players in the tournament, and each player will participate in seven matches. Suppose I, or any player, wins all seven matches out-right, I may still be beaten in the race for the top position by three players, A, B, or C, who win only four, five, and six games respectively, but who in all their matches reach their points on Wednesday night, whereas I am always behind at the half-way stage." There is not (it is added) enough difference in the award for a win and the award for the half-way points leader, and it is suggested that a more equitable arrangement would be for three points to count for a win and one for the man reaching his points on Wednesday night, or, alternatively, five for a win and three for the half-way stage. Otherwise a player, it is pointed out, might score 26 with four wins and seven midweek wins, against another player to whom would only be allotted 21 for seven wins.
We are not greatly impressed by this putting of the case, and for three main reasons. In the first place the shifting of the points basis as suggested would tend to make the game less sustained in its strenuousness considering the varying class of the players; in the second place the mere winning of heats apart from the proportional points scored is not a real or scientific test of excellence; and in the third place the possibility set forth is so extremely unlikely as to be practically negligible. For let us consider what would have to happen before a player winning seven games could be defeated by one winning four. He would have to meet seven different players in seven different weeks and be beaten on points at the mid-way stage of every one of those weeks.
In addition he would, after playing an inferior game in the first half of seven different weeks against seven different players, have to pull up his lost ground and convert a mid-week defeat into a week-end victory in each case. Has such a monotonous uniformity of defeat transformed into victory ever been known in billiards, or is it ever likely to be!
Let the point be applied to cricket, and let it be assumed that each of eight counties meets seven other counties. Let it be furthermore assumed that the county that wins the first innings in any match receives two points and that the county that wins the match receives three points. What would have to happen before Kent, say, winning every game that it played, could be beaten by a county that had only won four of its matches? It would have to be defeated by its seven opponents in each first innings that it played and it would have to beat those seven opposing counties, often by considerable margins, in each second innings. This may not be absolutely impossible, but is at least on the borderland thereof.
The real proof of the value or otherwise of the new departure, alike in its principle and its details, will be apparent in the result, and we have some confidence that, at the end of the season, the billiard-following public will be prepared to vote in its favour. Just as there have been fewer drawn games in cricket where heart and zest have been put into the first innings, so there are likely to be fewer protracted sessions or drawn games in billiards with the half-way points constantly before the players' minds.