BILLIARDS differs much in that its true spirit is obscured by false ideas, by wrong conceptions of ideas originally good. To cite a well-worn example, potting the white is still regarded by many as unsporting, though good players, of course, never hesitate to do so when it is the game. The original, and quite correct, idea was that it should be done as a last resource, because it nullified the chance of the players making a break.
By some quaint association of ideas, the opponent who actually is placed in a better position if he be potted when it is not the game, is apt to regard it as tantamount to annoyance. I have seen men of age and substance, pillars of Church and State, gobble with wrath, and even give up the game because they have been potted two or three times. A similar though less well-known example occurs at life-pool, the only good round game on the billiard table, though now, unfortunately, nearly as extinct as the dodo.
When only three are playing, it is obviously not polite to leave the next player a difficult position to get out of, because if he be potted you will probably go too.
Now, at pool it is a case of everyone for himself and the devil take the hindmost, yet often a player will be rated like a pick-pocket for playing "bad three pool."
It does not seem to occur to the indignant one that he will, in the course of the evening, be in a position to benefit from such bad tactics.
The worst of the fetishes is the one about losing-hazards being the amateur's game. In itself, the idea is quite correct; in fact, I will go farther. The losing-hazard is the backbone of everybody's game. It is the conception of the function of a backbone that is wrong.
The vertebral column, or backbone, is merely a scaffolding, whose main function is to support and protect the much more important brain and spinal cord. The real player only uses the losing-hazard to put him in touch with the three ball game, and it is much against the development of the game that, amongst amateurs at least, he is very likely to be beaten by an inferior player whose game is all backbone
A correspondent in the April number remarked that I was strongly opposed to this type of play.
I should like to point out to him that I am not singular in this respect. It is the opinion of practically all really good amateur players that the rules allow far too much latitude to the exploiters of the losing-hazard.
Another fallacy is the oft-repeated statement that George Gray's great feats of endurance improved the standard of amateur play, because bigger breaks could be made by following his methods. The real benefit accrued from the resultant limitation of hazards, not drastic enough, it is true, but which afforded a certain amount of relief to those who had groaned under unlimited red-ball domination for years before Gray's advent.
Discussing players who confine themselves to only one branch of the game reminds me of another popular misconception. An all-round player is one who demonstrates every phase of the game he excels at, yet one often sees, and hears, this term applied to a billiard player who cuts out close-cannons entirely, when it is clearly a misnomer. The close cannon player is the real all rounder, because, if he be not expert at the other branches of the game, he cannot get nursery position.
That a table must be 12 feet by 6 feet is a deplorable fetish, by which many are debarred from participating in the joys of the game. Good billiards can be played on 9 and 10ft. tables.
Certainly the game is easier, but that is more likely to be an advantage than a disadvantage in the eyes of the majority.
A fresh crop of fallacies has sprung up with the introduction of playing by time.
Thus, it is a widespread idea that a fast player has a decided advantage over a slow one in a match of this description. This is clearly not so when two players of equal skill are engaged, because both have the same number of innings. Thus, if one makes a 1,000-break at his first scoring innings, in 30 minutes, and the other follows with a similar run, taking an hour to compile it, at the end of an hour and a half the scores are level.
In other words, the man with the bigger average wins, irrespective of the time occupied.
An amateur who figured very prominently in the last championship disagreed with me on this point, and postulated a case that stumped me for the few minutes we were together.
He said that if a very fast player had all the run of the balls in the first of two two-hour sessions, he could score so many that, even if the luck turned completely in his much slower opponent's favour in the second session, he could not possibly make up the lee-way. The answer to this is, of course, that if the case be reversed, and the slow player has the same proportion of luck as his opponent had in the first thirty or so innings of the game, there will not be enough of the four hours left for the fast player to catch him.
In games played under handicap the case is different; but even here the fast player is not necessarily favoured. When a player is giving a huge start in a week or fortnight's game, it is obvious that the faster he scores the better, because both he and his opponent will have a greater number of innings than if he were to play slowly, and, as he will noticeably score many more per innings than the much inferior player, his chance of winning will be improved. In his case speed is therefore beneficial. But if the start-receiver play fast, it will as obviously be to his own disadvantage. So speed is detrimental in his case.
Let us take another example A, in a three-handed American tournament, has to concede B and C, who are known to be equal in skill, 5,000 in a week.
If it be a fair handicap as between A and B, a fast player, it is plain that A cannot beat C, who plays very slowly, because there will be considerably fewer innings each than when A plays B. Here, obviously, fast play is detrimental to B's chance, and slow play militates in C's favour. Yet the B v. C game should prove a good match. It is also apparent that it is impossible to handicap fairly in a time-limit game by the giving of fixed starts.
The only fair way would be to handicap on proportion scoring.
Thus the start given should enable a player to score at the rate of so many to his opponent's so many.
Talking of handicapping, a fallacious idea obtains among many that a bigger proportionate start should be given as the length of game increases.
Thus, if the handicap is 100 in 200, in 400 the start should be 220, in 800, 470 and so on, so that finally, three-quarters of the game is conceded instead of only half.
This is patently absurd. It is plain common sense that if a player's mean average be ten, he can give half the game to one whose averages are five, irrespective of the length of the game.
I am assuming that this latter will not be such as to be tiring to the inferior player.