If the students of last month's "Hints" have spent a fair amount of time in the interval that has since elapsed in sending the cue ball up and down the central line of the table at varying strengths from stringing to forcing pace, and if they have, as a necessary corollary, succeeded in striking the ball centrally each time; in bringing the cue well back and sending it the same distance through the ball; and in keeping the cue down to the bottom rail of the table and parallel with its sides, they should now be ready for a little middle pocket practice with the red ball as follows:— Make a small chalk mark—not with billiard chalk, but with a piece of tailor's chalk—on the central line of the table exactly 23 inches from the centre spot of the D or 19 inches from the centre spot of. the table. This is an exact half-ball shot into a middle pocket from either end of the D, and the stroke, if accurately made with ivory balls, will send the red ball up and down the centre of the table just as the cue sent the white in the previous one-ball practice. If bonzoline balls be used the red ball must be placed a trifle nearer the centre spot of the table to allow for the extra throw-off, but this will not affect the straight run of the red, which is the point just now to be insisted upon.
For there is here a great potting as well as a great in-off lesson, and one that, so far as the writer is aware, has not before been expounded in any published instructions as to the game of billiards. Driving the first object ball in any direction, either into a pocket or otherwise, may, for the purposes of this article, be called"potting"it. Therefore, there is no in-off without a simultaneous pot, and the student who, at the very commencement of his practice, gets into the habit of thinking first, when going for an in-off, of the direction that his proposed placing of the cue ball at a given angle of throw-off will impart to the object ball, is in a fair way towards making breaks in which not only will winning hazards be made with confidence but in which the object ball will be kept out of baulk and away from cushions, whilst pocket shoulders and unintended kisses will be equally avoided.
Here, then, is the lesson that is designed to achieve this highly-desirable end: The red ball has been driven with a half-ball or edge-aimed contact up and down the exact middle of the table from its position 23 inches above the baulk line. Simultaneously the cue ball has been struck from the end of the D, and has found its way cleanly and sweetly into a middle pocket. Having accomplished so much, what does the student know more than he knew before? He knows, if he is in the least observant, exactly what both the in-off and the potting half-ball look like and always must look like. Let him gaze long and fixedly over the centre of the cue ball to the inner edge of the red and thence to the centre (not the apparent centre but the actual centre) of the fall of the middle pocket. That is the half-ball angle in billiards and the sheet anchor of the game And when, later on, he places the red ball on the top spot of the table and the cue ball by the upper shoulder of a middle or top pocket, he will immediately recognize the same halfball angle in relation to a top pocket, as he also will when he places it on the pyramid spot and the cue ball on a baulk end spot.
And now, reverting to the original position for middle pocket half-balls, let him equally acquaint himself, as he easily can do, with the half-ball potting angle wherever and whenever he may need to use it. It can be done in two ways. First, taking the centre table spot as indicating the potting line and looking over the centre of the cue ball to the red, he will produce an imaginary line from the centre spot back through the red ball, and he will find that it comes out precisely midway between the centre and the edge of the red. That is, then, the point to be struck by the cue ball; but, as the balls are round, the point of aim to get the necessary contact in potting at any angle must always be exactly as far wide of the intended point of contact as that point is distant from the centre of the ball. In the half-ball case, therefore, the aim is at the edge of the red, which is struck midway between the edge and the centre, and the ball goes exactly up the middle of the table.
In the next lesson an alternative way of locating the potting angle—no matter what it may be—will be described; and the method of keeping the red ball going up and down in the neighbourhood of the centre of the table, when other than half-ball contacts have to be made in order to control the red ball, will be detailed. It has been said that middle pocket play is a one-stroke game. This point is referred to in another article in this issue, from which it will be seen that successful middle pocket play really involves many of the leading principles of billiards.