128.—"Can you advise me, in your next issue, with regard to the start off in a game? Red is on spot and white in hand. Playing from either baulk spot, using a fast, thin grazing shot, I have put red in either top pocket (of course, from left baulk spot put red in right top pocket, and vice versa.) What would you advise as a good start off? Are big breaks made from the start-off shot?"
Big breaks are not very likely to be made, at any rate, in these non-spot-stroke days, by a player who begins the game by attempting to cut in the red. The safest stroke, if you wish to avoid the usual opening miss and make an opening more likely at your second shot, is the giving of a single baulk. Aim from near the baulk corner spot to the further edge of the red.
This should leave the red over a baulk corner pocket and the cue ball near the side cushion. If the opponent goes out for the cannon he will probably miss it and an easy red winner or loser may be left on.
129.—"The one stroke that thoroughly beats me is the attempt to make cushion cannons round the table or on to the red on the spot from the white when near a side cushion. I nearly always get the kiss, and playing half-ball or fuller or finer with necessary side seems to make no difference. What ought I to do?"
What you do is right, but you evidently do it at the wrong time. Your first thought must be the course that the white will take after the intended contact. A glance through it on to the cushion will reveal this, and you should then be able to judge whether it would meet the cue ball. If an intended half-ball would occasion a kiss, a finer contact with running side should achieve the desired result and get you out of the difficulty.
130.—"Frequently I am in doubt whether to force or screw a ball. Which is considered safer or the better play?"
It is entirely a question of where it is desired to direct the object ball.
If screwed, the aim would naturally be finer, with the result that the object ball would be cut rather than driven. Forcing strokes, if delivered with top, are perhaps safer than screws, but, as we have said, it is all a question of position. In addition there are, of course, many occasions when, playing from hand, a forcing or screw stroke is played, although a natural angle stroke is on, and the same may be said of strokes not played from hand. Position is, in short, everything, and without it billiards is not billiards at all.
131.—"Following your advice as to playing fuller with slow running side and finer with slow check side, I frequently find that I get too thick or too fine, although sometimes it comes off all right. Can you help me on this point?"
We do not know exactly what directions you are referring to, but if we went at all fully into the matter we must have explained that the aim varies with the position of the stroke, with the distance to be travelled, and with the raising or not of the cue. Down the table the side must be reversed or double the allowance made; dead across the table no allowance need be made; at shorter distances the allowance varies from a half diameter to a quarter of an inch; and with a raised cue the allowance may have to be doubled. The only thing is to try all these varieties until you get used to and sure of them.
132.—"In Roberts's book I read that the dead straight kiss cannon when the white is behind the red on the spot and the player is in hand is really difficult to miss and does not deserve the applause that its successful accomplishment generally evokes. But it seems to me that a dead-straight aim is just the way to spoil the stroke. What is your opinion?"
If for "dead straight aim" you substituted "dead-full contact" we should agree with you, but have you ever made this dead-full contact.
It is the practical impossibility—or the extreme improbability—of the dead-full contact at such a distance that makes the stroke, when properly played, come off. When it is missed it is a hundred times more likely to be attributable to very bad, than to dead-full, aim.
133.—"At the championship match between Inman and Reece, which I went to see, the players frequently took several most careful aims at quite simple shots, and a friend who was with me said that if he himself did not play quickly he could not play at all. Which method is correct?"
It is a question of the circumstances and of the players. All good players take care, although they may not seem to do so. They possess the art that conceals art. In a stern match, such as the championship, neither player knows what a single misjudged stroke may produce against him.
Perhaps a 500 or 600 break! Then, again, he may be feeling a little anxious or perturbed and he knows that a few conscious lapses will make him feel worse still and perhaps put him off his game for the session. Under circumstances such as we have described the only safe principle is never to let the cue go against the cue ball until all necessary attention to the sure aim has been paid. We noticed what you refer to ourselves, and especially in the play of Inman, who seemed, from the state of the score-board at the time, to need it less than Reece. But he was religiously adhering to the time-worn and quite useful billiard maxim: "When you hold the lead keep it?"
134.—"Cannot some steps be taken to bring home to the minds of amateur billiard players, as a body, the absurdity of not potting the white when it is to their advantage (apart from the immediate score of two) to do so? What do you recommend?"
The white is potted more now than formerly, and we believe the prejudice against the practice is slowly breaking down. The best plan is for the player who holds the correct view to request his opponent to put him down when that becomes the obvious play. An understanding will thereby be effected in a perfectly natural manner, and the idea will spread. Those who resent being put down do not realize that they are thereby given the latitude of the entire D to play from, and if their opponent, instead of giving a single or double baulk, goes for the red he he is as likely as not—unless a very good player—to leave a good game on. The white should always be potted when this leads to a further score or to safety, provided that an equal score or safety appears less possible without it.