BILLIARD SUBSCRIPTION ROOMS

LIKE most other things in this world, billiard subscription rooms have their advantages and their disadvantages. One of the greatest drawbacks to public billiard rooms is the necessity at times of meeting extremely objectionable company, yet we think it will be generally found that a good common-sense proprietor can keep his business sufficiently select without imposing restrictions on the everyday frequenters of his room.

In all billiard rooms there is a tendency for the company to settle down into cliques, and in many throughout the country the owner of the room can count his customers on his fingers, and would be bound to admit that the loss of four or five would mean ruin, unless their loss could be supplied by new blood.

We fear, however, that many a first-rate business has been ruined by efforts on the part of the proprietor of the room to keep his company together by making his room a subscription room.

We will take an ordinary case, where the regular frequenters of a room number about twenty, and where each evening the proprietor of the room can depend upon a pool varying say from five to ten players. Now these are the very cases where too often in an evil hour the idea of a subscription room is started. In the first place, there is the strong temptation to a billiard-room keeper of coming into instant possession of what is to him a little capital. If he can induce his twenty players to subscribe £1 a-piece, he, of course, is £20 in pocket; and there are, alas! in the billiard world, many sanguine individuals who have an idea that if they only had a certain sum of money, to what they call start with, they could make a fortune in no time —the fortune generally meaning that they would lose it all in backing horses in a week or two. However, we will suppose the subscription room started. Now it will invariably be found that at starting everything goes on uncommonly well, the very fact of having paid a subscription inducing many persons to frequent the room more than ever, they having a feeling that, unless they go pretty regularly, they do not get their money's worth. It will also be found, however, that where the same players play together every night, some regularly win a little while others steadily lose a good deal, for it must be remembered that in the majority of billiard rooms the only real winner is "the table." Now, unfortunately, these principal losers are apt slowly one by one to drop off, and in subscription rooms, especially where the present subscribers have a voice in the election of new members, their place is very difficult to supply. It will also equally invariably be found that the best player in this little clique will strongly object to the introduction of any new member who can play at all better than himself. This will also be found to be the case in any pool where an objection is made on the ground that any player is "too good." It is the next best player who objects, and not one of the inferior ones.

Perhaps the greatest difficulty an owner of a subscription room feels is in getting in the second year's subscription. Here, again, he runs the risk of losing one or two good customers, and ultimately the effect is to leave the room in a state somewhat similar to a pond in which two or three large pike are left who have devoured all the smaller fish, and there is nothing left for them to do but to attempt to prey on one another; of this they soon get tired, and ultimately in self-defence the proprietor is gradually obliged to let in new men who are not subscribers at all, which disgusts those who have paid their subscriptions.

The result of all this is that the play in the room gradually drops off, owing to the loss of vitality in having no young blood constantly flowing in to take the place of old blood flowing out.

Most billiard-room proprietors, if they look around them, will remember how their present company was gradually formed, one by one dropping in at a time. Often, too, will it be found that some of the best players in the room are those who, when they first came, could scarcely play at all.

For subscription rooms to be successful it should, as much as possible, be the proprietor's object to constantly keep in view the introduction of new members, and in order further to be successfully carried out, he alone should have the power of accepting or refusing entries. There are many men who object on principle to paying for being allowed to play in a certain room. Now, the object in view, in subscription rooms, is to keep out objectionable characters, and not to make money out of the subscriptions.

The subscriptions should therefore be made as much as possible simply a nominal sum. It may seem strange, yet no less strange than true, that there are hundreds of men who would think nothing of losing a couple of sovereigns in am evening at pool, who nevertheless would not care to pay half a sovereign in the shape of a subscription.

The same feeling is manifested by many m joining co-operative stores. The small subscription, trifling as it is, stops many. They feel that in becoming a purchaser they confer, not receive a benefit, and object to pay accordingly.

Keepers of subscription rooms should also remember that to object to any good player simply on account of his play is a most suicidal policy. There is a maxim that we may lay down in billiards, and that is, no room can take a large sum of money weekly unless really good players frequent it.

Contrast, for instance, the receipts of a public room like Cook's, in Regent-street, where there is plenty of play among plenty of good players, with an ordinary public billiard room in a country town, where a good player is the exception.

One room probably will take in the shape of tables about £18 a week, while the other will rarely take more than three.

Two first-class players at pyramids, who often will divide the balls remaining on the table after one has scored eight, will play six games an hour. On the other hand, two inferior players will sometimes take an hour to get through a single game.

The difference this makes to the receipts is of course obvious. On the whole we are inclined to think that subscription rooms will generally be found to be failures, and we should be glad to know of any cases where they have fairly existed over two years. We cannot help thinking that such cases are rare for the reasons we have already assigned.

We would, however, confine our observations simply to subscription rooms, and by no means to billiard clubs, which we are glad to see very much on the increase throughout the country. It will be by these means, especially in relation to working men's clubs, that billiards will be brought within the reach of the poorer and hard-working classes, who sadly require rational and at the same time interesting amusements to attract them from their present clubs—the public-houses. Those who have witnessed the way in which in France billiards is put within the reach of all classes, and with what benefit, will be glad to see the commencement of a similar state of things in this country.

There is perhaps no way in which the tone of the lower classes can be raised, better than that of placing cheap, innocent, and agreeable recreations within their reach.