A suggestion has been made that misses should be deducted from a striker's score instead of being added to that of his opponent.
Not very much appears to have been heard of George Gray since his comparative failure with ivory balls in the 1914 championship.
One of the dictums of King Edward the Seventh, it is said, was that no gentleman should be able to make a break of more than 25 at billiards!
Walter Lindrum, who is now 21, has been putting up some strong play in the past Australian season with his brother Fred, the Australian professional champion.
So long as eight years ago Smith expressed his intention of challenging Inman for the championship. He said:" I mean to try my luck. I have a bigger chance, perhaps, than many imagine."
The amalgamation of the Billiard Control Club and the Billiard Association, lately accomplished, was considered so long ago as 1913, but was thought to be undesirable at that time.
Perhaps the time will come when The Billiard Player will be familiarly known as The" B.P."There are also other good" B.P.s,"such as Billiard Professional and British Public, to say nothing of Baden-Powell.
George Nelson, an interesting writer on, as well as a good player of the game, holds the view that when playing in a large hall the half-ball angle appears to be narrower than when playing in an ordinary room.
There are two certainties in billiards. One is that the red, after being pocketed, is spotted, and the other is that the cue ball, after finding a pocket, goes back to baulk. Sometimes both happen at the same time.
Mr. Hooper's advent from Australia as an entrant in the English amateur championship does not represent a merely recent idea. It was debated in Australia before the war, but no sufficiently good player was then in sight.
In 1912 Aiken expressed the opinion that Smith was the best of the younger school of billiard professionals and that he would go far. On the other hand, Smith confesses to great admiration of the play of both Newman and Falkiner.
Stevenson has two" thousand "records. He made a thousand breaks of over 100 in one season and 1,016 by all-round play off bonzoline balls under modern rules in another. The thousand with ivory balls under modern regulations has yet to be made.
" Every champion realizes that he must in due time go to the wall. It overtakes us all, and I am alive to the fact that there are players coming along who will in the end beat me."—Inman in The News of the World, March 29, 1914.
The Billiard Player wants to get into touch with players able to keep it informed as to Stock Exchange and Navy and Army billiards, also with interesting incidents in connexion with club and institute and municipal and police play.
Dawson once told how he had, before becoming a professional, won both the first and second prizes offered in a big Christmas handicap at Huddersfield, the man who came next to him having sold his prize to someone who gave it as a first prize in another handicap, which Dawson also won.
The Prince of Wales and his brothers play a good game of billiards, and the same can be said of the Queen of Norway and of Princess Mary. The King is fond of the game, in which the Queen is understood to take only a modified interest. Another royal personage who plays and enjoys it is the King of Spain.
How many amateurs have made a 100 break? Are there as many as 500 in the United Kingdom? We will gladly post a copy of The Billiard Player to any amateur who sends us on a postcard the figures of a break above 100 that he has made. The Billiard Player has the names of 250, but there should be more.
Inman has had good fortune on the turf. As an angler he was also lucky when in Canada some years ago, for he caught simultaneously a 6-lb. salmon and a 37-lb. cod that was attacking it. In some other matter, he has had rather bad luck, for he has been robbed of valued articles more than once.
Smith has a simple method of scoring freely, which he uses less now than formerly, but which he can call to his assistance when required. It is the use of the middle pocket for both red and white in-offs in a sequence of strokes, and in getting and maintaining this position an occasional gentle cannon bears its effective part.
A stroke for Christmas, in addition to the trick strokes illustrated on a later page of this number, is the potting of the red from the D in the middle pocket when the red is on the centre spot and another ball is touching it on the central line behind. It can even be done with another white touching it below and without moving either.
Are all hotel billiard tables and accessories so well attended to as they might be? It is a pity with so exquisite a game if it be otherwise. At the same time there are not many equipments even in small country inns quite so bad as that of which Lord Wimborne once said that the principal difference between the two white balls was their shape.
Although a billiard table has been refused to British legislators, it is known that two billiard tables are provided for the use of the members of the House of Representatives of the Australian Commonwealth at Melbourne, and it is officially reported that"during the Session the tables are used frequently; the provision is generally approved; and apparently there is no interference with the serious business of politics."