No break can be made at will in billiards without ball control, by which is meant the striking of the cue ball in such a way that when an in-off is scored the object ball is guided to a desired location; when a pot is scored the cue ball is similarly guided; and when a cannon is made two, and sometimes all three, of the balls are left in such a position that a further score to follow with is practically certain.
There are, roughly speaking, two classes of billiard players—shot players and sequence players. The former may, on some happy, far-separated occasions, string together a break of thirty, or even forty. On other occasions they may go to the table twenty times to score as many points. Such players may have certain correct notions, which help them when they make their so-called breaks, but, so long as they consider the making of the immediate shot the chief thing to be really concerned about, any favourable positions that may result from successive strokes can only be classed as fortuitous happenings.
With the sequence player it is different. Before deciding to play an easy shot by means of the half-ball contact, he glances at the point towards which such contact would drive the object ball. Perhaps he then finds that the halfball contact is all right, but that the strength must be above medium, or slow. He may have to drive the object ball in and out of baulk or play so gently upon it that it does not enter baulk and remains favourably placed.
Or his glance may show him that the intended half-ball contact would drive the white into a pocket, or the ball against the shoulder of a pocket or under a cushion, or lead to a kissing of the balls or the loss of one (or perhaps two) in baulk. He consequently takes the object ball finer, or fuller, than half-ball, applying the necessary compensation of side, screw, or stun, and has the satisfaction—known only to the sequence player—of seeing the threatened danger averted and the way nicely cleared for a further score.
There is one point here that should be emphasized. Players who shirk distant pockets when an easy cannon is on fail to realize bow enormously more exacting is position cannon play than position pocket play. It is not merely a question of missing or hitting a ball, or of missing or entering a pocket. The question that the cannon position player has to ask himself is: "On which sides must the cue ball strike both object and cannon ball and what must be the degree and force of the contacts".
In position pocket play it is very often as easy to play the right game as the wrong, but in position cannon play the case is different. But even so the billiard student who desires to play the correct game right through need not despair, and the practice of a few simple specimen positions may impart to him the confidence that will lead him insensibly on to higher flights.
For example: The cue ball is in hand and the two object balls are fifteen inches apart in the middle of the right hand half of the table above the middle pocket, in easy half-ball cannon position, These two balls may now be guided respectively towards the spot and pocket, with the cue ball following them, by the simple expedient of shifting the cue ball an inch wider than half-ball so as to catch both object balls on their inner sides.
Or the cue ball might be in hand with an easy near halfball cannon leading up to a middle pocket. But the halfball contact would mean leaving the cue ball between the other two, a thing which must always be avoided in cannon play. So the cue ball is spotted for the quarter ball angle instead of the half-ball, and a three-quarter contact is aimed for, the result being that the two object balls are gently driven in front of the cue ball.
It is nearly always better to drive the two object balls in front of the cue ball by means of fuller than half-ball stroke, but there occasionally happens a case in which the cue ball can just squeeze through both balls, grazing the first and moving the second and so still leaving for itself a commanding position. But such instances are comparatively rare.
Many other simple instances of playing for position in billiards as distinguished from mere shot playing might be usefully given. The object ball is, say, fifteen inches away from a middle pocket on a diagonal line drawn from such pocket across the table to the end of the baulk line.
This is an easy half-ball shot from baulk, but if, when the cue ball has been spotted for the half-ball stroke a glance be taken through its centre to the point of contact on the object ball, namely, half-an-inch fuller than the edge, and if the glance be carried from this point through the object ball and beyond, it will at once be seen that the intended half-ball shot at ordinary strength would cut the object ball across the table, instead of up and down it and probably leave it under the opposite side cushion.
The remedy is obvious. The spotting must be altered to quarter-ball and the contact must be three-quarter instead of half-ball By this means the object ball is guided up and down the table and with proper strength another middle pocket in-off is left on. Or, let us suppose that the object ball is again 15 inches from the middle pocket on an imaginary line drawn from such pocket across the table to midway between the baulk line and the other middle pocket.
In this case the same quarter-ball spotting must be adopted but the aim, instead of being half-an-inch fuller than halfball, must be half-an-inch finer. This cuts the object ball towards the top cushion and back down the middle of the table or thereabouts, instead of landing it in the top corner pocket or on one of the shoulders of the same.