In this short article an endeavour will be made to initiate the student into the main essentials of the top of the table game, by means of a few practical examples. Place the red ball on the billiard spot and the white ball just behind it. The cue ball might be a foot or more below the spot on a diagonal line from well above a middle pocket. Play very gently for a three-quarter ball cannon and the red ball will be found lying nicely over the corner pocket with the cue ball an inch or so below the white. If the cannon had been taken half-ball the position would at once have been destroyed, as the white would have been cut towards the pocket instead of the red, and the red sent too low down.
Now play on to the red and pot it, but first ask yourself three questions. In order to bring the cue ball round to a position similar to that which it occupied on the other side of the table, must the red be (1) taken finer or fuller than half-ball, and how much? (2) must side be imparted to the cue ball? and (3) must the strength (as regulated by the contact) be dead slow, fairly slow, or free?
Many of the strokes in top-of-the-table play are to be made—and best made—without side, but side need not be shunned when required, as it is easier to play accurately with slow side at comparatively short range than it is at long range or with a fast stroke at any range. A slow ball laden with side pulls to such an extent that, when running the length of the table aim has to be taken dead full, whereas with a fast stroke the normal aim need not be altered. At short range, on the other hand, the cloth pull is largely negligible, so far as aim is concerned. To prove this, place the red ball against the top cushion a foot from a corner pocket and the cue ball for a simple slow pot by aiming at the cushion behind the ball. Now execute the same stroke at the same strength with running side, using the same aim, and watch the altered direction that the cue ball will take, the pot having meanwhile been duly made.
The difficulty of top-of-the-table play in billiards, including cushion cannoning in that latitude, has been both understated and over-estimated in books that have been written on the subject. To the indifferent player nothing can be more difficult, but the player who has thoroughly grasped the principles of the general game will quickly realize that the work at the top of the table is really the ordinary game in miniature.
Players whose only thought is the immediate cannon or pot will do no good at the top of the table, because the first essential of that modern development of the game is a close and accurate diagnosis of where the cue ball will run and stop after a pot, and where all three balls will be left after a cannon. And here it is, also, that the exceeding virtue of gentle play in billiards makes itself manifest.
When the object ball and cannon ball are near to each other it is comparatively easy to keep them so for a few strokes, or guide the red towards a pocket whilst also leaving the other in a likely scoring position. In potting the red, again, it is often as easy to guide the cue ball into another scoring position as it is to simply "go for the red."
The simplest form of top-of-the-table play is that which retains the white behind the spot, utilizing it for a cannon alternately with a pot near the pocket. If near to the spot to begin with, as we have described, it is some time before the gentle run-through cannon contacts finally land it against the cushion, and after this the "postman's knock" phase commences.
If, when the pot has been made, the cue ball is not brought satisfactorily round for an easily-controlled cannon, either direct or off the top cushion, a pot off the spot is the game, and this may be made, without disturbing the white, by means of a gentle screw-back if opposite the pocket; of a gentle stun if opposite the lower shoulder; or of a two cushion run-through with running side if opposite the upper shoulder.