The Professional Tournament
For the moment the professional tournament at Burroughes Hall has been suspended to give place to interesting championship events, both amateur and professional, in the same hall, It is to be resumed on March 21, when the present professional champion (W. Smith) will complete his turn against Aiken, of whom the first week of the present month already left him well ahead. It may be taken as practically certain that Smith will prove too strong for Aiken, and in that case he and Newman will have carried off equally between them six of the matches that have as yet been played.
Of the other four Reece has won two and Stevenson and Falkiner one each. Five matches remain to be contested, and the only possibility of doing better than Smith or Newman so far as other players are concerned lies with Stevenson, who has still three matches to play—against Smith, Newman, and Falkiner— and would have to win them all.
The extraordinary thing in the tournament thus far has been the ill-luck, or whatever it may have been, of Falkiner, and he has failed in an order reverse from that which might have been anticipated. By Reece he was beaten by as many as 1,703 points, whereas he was within 50 points, in actual scoring, of both Smith and Newman.
Falkiner is a very great player, and we doubt whether a more finished exponent of the close cannot art has existed. His attack is audacious and his speed electric. The extreme closeness of his play, too, seems ever to be verging on the risk of a "touch" with one of the object balls. It is all great artistry, but whether the true genius of match-winning lies here may be doubted.
When Smith beats Falkiner (for whose play he has a profound respect) it is not, in our opinion, that he excels him on the whole as a cueman, but that he adopts the safer role of more open play. And it is, we think, an experience abundantly established that, where a confirmed top-of-the-table player, however good, and whether professional or amateur, beats an open-playing opponent about equal to himself once he loses to him twice. Close play in billiards is a good servant, but, when unduly sustained, is often a hard master.
Aiken (playing) had a handicap advantage of 1,000 but was beaten by Falkiner by 1,063.