Following the recent recommendation made by the Professional Advisory Committee to the Billiards Control Club that consecutive losing hazards off the same ball should be restricted to 25, we desire once more to inquire—as we did so long ago as July, 1911—whether some one simple and comprehensive rule might not be evolved which, whilst eliminating all possibility of monotony from billiards, would still leave scope for specialization to a reasonable extent As the game stands, there is a close limit to red potting strokes and a less restricted limit to ball-to-ball cannons.
There is no limit to losing hazards or to mixed pots and cannons, otherwise known as top-of-the-table play. The monotony of the spot stroke led to the invention of the winner-cannon movement, to which great players such as Roberts, Mitchell, Dawson, and Stevenson, turned as a natural development of spot stroke specialization. Good spot stroke capacity is, indeed, essential to any player who desires to excel at top-of-the-table play, and it may be suggested with some confidence that if Peall had not, in his day, carried the spot stroke to the point of monotony, just as Gray has since carried the losing hazard stroke, the top-of-the-table game, with all its consummate beauty and endless variety, would never have been heard of.
In suggesting this, however, we are very far from attributing the modern top-of-the-table game to the barring of the spot stroke. The stroke was not, indeed, barred until after it had ceased to attract or until the winner-cannon alternative, as perfected by John Roberts, was in free and fruitful use. It has been ever so, until the formation of the Billiards Control Club, in the history of billiards. When no professional could be found willing, to publicly specialize on a close potting or a close cannon stroke, and when the public could not be drawn, even with ropes, to witness such a display, officialdom has stepped forward, and, with much fuss and circumstance, enacted superfluous restrictive laws.
What is needed in billiards control is uniformity and consistency, and the two alternative suggestions that we now desire to make have this prime desideratum in view.
Our first suggestion is that no limit or restriction whatsoever (except, perhaps, in championship matches, or where otherwise officially directed or mutually arranged) be placed upon any properly-executed stroke at billiards. In advocating this radical step we would point out that the likelihood of professionals carrying any one stroke to the point of monotony is as remote as the likelihood of amateurs being able to do so. Long before George Gray was heard of in the billiard world, Inman had made long runs off the red, but it was during those years when he was fighting for recognition as a scorer, and when, acting under good advice, he was adhering to the open game as a safer points-collecting medium than close tactics. He now plays the close and open game almost equally well, and it is as inconceivable that he would indulge in public in long bouts of the still legal red losers as that he, or any other professional, would specialize on the spot stroke if it were revived.
There is an alternative suggestion, and it is the simple and comprehensive one, that not more than twenty-five consecutive ball-to-ball cannons or winning or losing hazards off the same ball should be made. The present rule as to ball-to-ball cannons is that an indirect cannot must intervene to permit of the renewal of the sequence. Similarly in the case of winning hazards either a cannon or a losing hazard would suffice, and in the case of losing hazards a cannon, winning hazard, or losing hazard off another ball.
By this means, instead of the practice of essential billiard strokes being discouraged by too close restrictions, a direct incentive to their reasonable cultivation would be provided, whilst, at the same time, all likelihood of monotony would be eliminated from the game. Indeed, attractive features would be added to it, just as already exist in connection with close cannon and top-of-the-table play. To the informed billiard spectator nothing is more fraught with interest and mild excitement than noting how a professional, at the close of a run of twenty-five direct cannons, invokes the aid of a cushion or guides the red to potting position, or, after two successive pots from spot into a top pocket, wheels the cue ball round to take up position for another pot or in-off at the centre of the table.
That the leading professionals are in earnest in their advocacy of a limitation of the losing hazard sequences is evident and understandable. They have spent years in acquiring all-round billiard excellence rather than perfection at a single stroke, and they do not deem it reasonable that their championship chances should be mortgaged by championship encounters with stroke specialists. There is much to be said for this contention, although we are not perfectly sure that there is a stroke specialist living who would be quite sure to win the championship from the best all-round exponent. Stevenson at his best would be not unlikely, in our judgment, to beat either Peall, with the spot stroke thrown in, Gray with unlimited losing hazards, or Reece with unlimited close cannons, not even excluding the anchor stroke. But even if this were not so it would be quite practicable, as we have already suggested, to make special stipulations for the championship game without any alteration of the present rules.