Here and There Notes
- In the Preliminary Professional Tournament, commencing
on October 3, it is understood that Messrs. Burroughes
and Watts intend to present a cue and case each week to
the amateur making the best break from the position left
when each session has been completed, and it will be
interesting to note whether an amateur can, on
occasion, make more points than the professional's
addition to an unfinished effort.
- It will be noticed, from pictures in this issue, that
some first-class cueists play with their left eye more
over the cue than the right. This, of course, necessitates an
unconscious alteration of aim, as will be seen at
once if an object be looked at with the raised forefinger
intervening and the eyes alternately closed and opened,
first when the lace is at right angles and then when it is
slightly turned.
- George Nelson, ex-Yorkshire professional
champion, conceded
Mr. W. Lord, a well known Leeds amateur,
250 in 500 in an exhibition match on September 20, in aid of
St. Dunstan's Billiard
Fund, and won by 85.
- The billiard table for the Dollis Hill (Cricklewood)
Hospital, referred to in the last issue of The Billiard
Player, was opened on September 12, when an interesting
exhibition game was played by Mr. S. H. Fry and T.
Newman, and by Mr. W. J. Peall and T. Reece.
- The amateur and professional champions opened the
programme, and Newman, who conceded 100 start in
300, made a fine 168 break at his first visit to the table,
and won by 94 points. Reece, who conceded 100 in 300
to Peall, was beaten, as the old spot-stroke champion was
in fine form, and won by 123 points. The fine new table,
generously supplied at cost by Messrs. Thurston, was
the joint result of initiative and energy on the part of
Mr. Harry Young and of Evening News publicity.
- At the end of August Inman came up from Cornwall
to play three matches of 1,500 up against Arthur Peall
at the Westbourne Hall, Bayswater, the Clapham Junction Hall, and the Kingston Hall. The idea was that
he should concede 300 points in each game, but Peall
won them all handsomely.
- At Messrs. Thurston's there is an entry in the firm's
books showing details of the billiard table supplied to
"Charles Dickens, of Gads Hill, Rochester," in 1864.
The price was £30! There is also preserved a cheque
on Coutts's Bank for
£9 1s., signed Charles
Dickens, and sent two
years later, in 1866,
for billiard accessories.
- Surbiton Chapel has
been converted into a
billiard hall, and at
Brixton the "Antelope" billiard saloon,
on the central of whose
three tables the late
King Edward is said
to have played, was reopened on September
17.
- Two hundred and
fifty members of the
National Club, Barrow-in-Furness, attended
the funeral of Patrick
Bernard Rooney,
Barrow's champion billiard player. Deceased
returned from the
South African Goldfields a few years ago.
- Inman,
writing in
The News of the
World,
questions
whether billiards is
any help to golf except,
perhaps, in near putting, and even there it
is the ball that is
struck that is looked at.
- An application for a patent to prevent billiard chalk
from being carried away has led the Comptroller to
direct reference to several other patents with the same
idea in view. Chalk would seem to be one of the most
precarious accessories of the billiard table.
- The billiard correspondent of The Sunday Times says
that Roberts had the knowledge that he had left no
opponent alive who had ever beaten him on points.