Play Points That Matter

• A weaker player is greatly daring and hardly wise who goes out for almost impossible strokes instead of playing for safety.
• Always play carefully at the beginning of a game. If you are the first to make a break it begets confidence and settles you down.
• The chalking of the cue is an art, and one that professionals sedulously cultivate. You may see them go through a whole fortnight's match of 16,000 up without a single mis-cue.
• It usually pays better, except at close range pocket or cannon strokes, to drive the first object ball than to cut it, and it is as easy to aim half an inch inside the edge of the ball as half an inch outside it.
• Close cannon play is really the ordinary cannon game written small, and the attention has to be fixed quite as much on the probable course of the first as of the second cannon ball if both are to be kept just in front of the cue ball.
• Notice how gentle a stroke sends a ball quite a long way, and never forget it. A ball is so easily driven beyond its intended position.
• As soon as top-of-the-table play becomes precarious return to baulk should be sought for by means of a top pocket in-off which leaves middle pocket or drop cannon position.
• In top-of-the-table play the ideal position is with the cue ball a few inches laterally below the red and the other white ball behind it.
• Dawson once made a long series of alternate cannons and pots (one of each) by means of the postman's knock against the second white banked against the top cushion. This meant, of course, precision to a hair's breadth.
• A very important rule in position play is really a reversal of what is the natural inclination of a player. Thus, when an in-off is being played for, the run of the object ball should first be considered, and when a pot is the idea the intended placing of the cue ball should have primary consideration. Apart from this no considerable break can be made, and the unintended loss of the white, kisses, and pocket shoulders cannot be avoided.