The dissimilarity between English billiards and the carom game as played in America and on the continent (says The Billiards Magazine, Chicago), has made it almost impossible to match the leading experts of these respective styles.
Frank Ives, the American champion, outwitted John Roberts, the greatest of English professionals, in a compromise match. The story of the game, as related by the late John Thatcher, is as follows:—
Ives, in 1892, after winning the American championship at 14-inch baulkline from Jacob Schaefer, and holding same against Geo. F. Slosson, ambitiously sought other fields of conquest and journeyed to Paris, where for several months he sojourned, and met and defeated all comers, with the exception of Maurice Vignaux and Jacob Schaefer, which pair was engaged at a rival academy.
It was when returning to America, Ives, passing through London, tarried and informed himself as to the probability of securing a match with John Roberts, the English champion, at some style of compromise game. Ives, like Slosson and Schaefer, knew well that at a regulation English game no living man had a chance to beat Roberts. Calling upon the English champion, the American was well received and at once the men began figuring as to the conditions which would bring them together in the matter of billiard speed.
Nothing was done until the spring of 1893, when Tom Taylor (an English professional billiardist, who really discovered the system of "end play," which, perfected by Roberts, accounts for championship form) landed in Chicago with credentials from John Roberts, as matchmaker.
On the 29th of April, 1893, articles of agreement were signed. These called for a 12,000 point match, under English rules, for 5,000 dollars a side, the table to be 6ft by 12ft, with six pockets of the best make of Burroughes and Watts; size of pocket, 3¼ inches; size of balls, 2¼ inches. Mr. Taylor went home entirely satisfied, as he had no doubt that "Jack" (as all Englishmen called Roberts) had a good thing. The concession, "English rules to govern," had settled all his fears. But Yankees have been famed since time immemorial as to being up to selling wooden nutmegs, and even wooden oats. In carefully digesting the book of English rules, the youth from Plainwell, Mich., had discovered something.
Section 44 of the rule reads: "The balls being jammed in the pocket so that the greater part is off the table, they shall be considered to have been holed."
But this did not bar the jaw with a 2¼ inch ball, for with such size one cannot so place two balls in the mouth of the pocket, but that some portion of the bed of the table will be between them and the fall of the pocket. The rule was all for which it was intended (the regular English game calls for 3 5/8-inch pockets and 2 1/16-inch balls), but the Yankee saw the flaw, and so readily accepted Taylor's conditions.
Ives kept his secret well, and was never seen to practice with his balls wedged (a position in which any amateur could make enormous runs), the first trial having assured him that the position once gained, any length of game was over. He contented himself by playing "the rail," and acquired such skill that the balls could be held past the side pocket. Breaks of 600 and 800 were scored, and when he left for England the American thought that he could win "hands down" without the jaw.
Just before the date of the match Ives was taken ill, and the dampness of London affecting him seriously, he, when the match was two-thirds over, was apparently beaten.
Roberts had played much better than had been bargained for, in fact, had demonstrated that he outclassed any English billiardist ever produced by easily adapting himself to changed conditions.
Ives, in response to a cablegram from an American friend, had jogged the first night, in order that some money might be placed. But Thursday he probably wished he had gone on from the start. His friend in America, who knew about the jaw, kept saying to himself, "Will he never get it?" and finally gave up hope. But Friday morning the dispatches read: "Ives runs 1,540 and is ahead." How the American was hooted for "silly business," as the English onlookers expressed it, and how finally, and after scoring 2,540, he destroyed the lock he had on the spheres, is familiar to all interested.
The game was his, and later advices told of the "peculiar position of the balls." It seems that Ives did not gain the jaw, but near the pocket got something like "the anchor," and with the delicacy never displayed other than by Jacob Schaefer and himself, kept on clicking off "cannons."