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.