A question that I am often asked is, "Does playing on a small billiard-table spoil your game on the full-size?" I say, emphatically, "No," for the mere act of handling a cue should improve your play. Apart from this, one has to aim just as accurately on the smaller table as on the full-size, and practice in aiming at any time is a very important factor in improving one's game. Indeed, one might almost say that, with the best of players, at least 80 per cent, of missed shots are through faulty aiming.
When I hear, as one often does, players accounting for their poor play on a full-sized table by saying, "I have been playing on a small table, and it has put me off my game," it reminds me of the following strange but true story:— One of the "I'm-off-my-game-to-day" style of players was visiting a club and, having been badly beaten by one of the club members, complained that he was not used to playing on small tables. The table was really full-sized, and the club member blandly replied: "Sorry, old chap, but it is Saturday afternoon, and we always lend our full-sized table out for the weekly football match."
I am afraid that this fear of being "put off one's game on the full size" spoils a proper appreciation of the pleasure of playing on a small table. But the game can be made just as enjoyable there, and is almost as difficult.
I have played many a thousand up on a quarter-size table, and have thoroughly enjoyed it. What other indoor game is there that can compare with even the smallest of small billiard-tables?
I am not writing from my own experience alone, for I have visited many friends who own small tables, and they have spoken in enthusiastic terms of the pleasant evenings that they (the family and friends) have passed with the small table.
One advantage that the smaller table has over its bigger brother is that ladies and the youngsters are better able to join in the game, and this reminds me that no less an authority than the late John Roberts once said that the orthodox full-sized table was too big, and that the game would have been more popular if the present "three-quarter" size (9ft. by 4½ft.) table had been the full-size table.
This was said, though, before the quarter-sized table was so popular as it is to-day. Since then I know of one firm alone whose average sale of these small billiard tables during certain winter months is 100 per day. One hundred per day mind you, not 100 per week, and that has been going on for years. One wonders where they all go to, for they do not "perish" very easily, and even the old fashioned ones with wooden beds, that were made over twenty years ago, find plenty of buyers in the sale rooms. I am inclined to think that these small tables have had no little to do with the present billiard boom.
A realization of the pleasure to be obtained from the smaller tables has not yet been fully attained. For instance, I find very few owners of small tables who have more than the usual three billiard balls. They have an idea that because snooker is usually played with twenty two balls, and you cannot get twenty-two balls on a quarter-sized table, you cannot play snooker. This is wrong, for all you have to do is to substitute six reds for the usual fifteen, and with the seven coloured balls you can get just as good a game as with a full set. Several of my friends who have tried what I call "snooker, junior," claim that it is a more interesting game than with a full set. There is much to be said for this contention, for where you have six reds and seven colours, the most interesting part of the game, i.e, "snookering" one's opponent, lends itself to the cue much more readily than with fifteen reds. Adaptable as it is to any number of players, "snooker" is, perhaps, a more social game than billiards, and is, therefore, eminently suitable for the small table owner.
I have found from experience that an added interest in the table always results from the acquisition of a small "snooker" set. Besides the game of "snooker," the owner of a small set of "snooker" balls has many more games added to his table. For instance, the popular game of "Slosh" (Russian or Indian pool) can be played on it. Pool proper, that good old-fashioned game which was so popular thirty years ago, can also be played by any number of players up to eight.