Billiard Law and Learning

• Pockets were first added to a billiard table in the seventeenth century.
• America is about the only country where billiards is played in the open air, many rich men having tables placed on the roofs of their houses during the summer.
• Side or end windows in a billiard room should always be provided with light-proof curtains, and so constructed that the tops may open separately to ventilate the room.
• If possible, it is by far the best that a billiard room should be lighted only from the top.
• In Battersea there is a Municipal Billiard Room, and the game is supported by the rates.
• The door leading into the billiard room, especially if the room be in a club or public, should have a glass window let into it to enable those entering to defer doing so until the end of the stroke, thus avoiding annoyance to the players.
• If a drop cannon has to be played at more than medium pace, the use of the top cushion is then advisable.
• In billiards, the player should always try and keep all three balls within the circle of vision, and the nearer the head gets to the cue level, the better will this be achieved.
• At billiards the simplest shot requires as much careful thought and consideration as the hardest. Always keep this in mind, and you will increase the size of your breaks.
• Leather cue-tips were introduced rather more than one hundred years ago, and the invention is generally credited to an officer in the French army.
• George Gray has acknowledged his debt to one ball practice as a means of gaining perfect accuracy in striking and the correct method of cue-delivery. For this purpose there is nothing better than the old practice stroke of placing the cue-ball on the centre spot of the "D," and playing it directly up the table over the line of spots in such a way that it returns straight to the cue-point. But there are other "one-ball" strokes well worth practising with a view of cultivating strength. Place the cue-ball anywhere on the baulk-line and play to leave it on the centre spot. Then, for a change, try the pyramid spot, and the billiard spot. Continue the experiment by attempting to leave the ball on either of these spots after contact with the top cushion and you will find you have learned something well worth knowing about controlling the run of the cue-ball. At the same time, by playing from a variety of positions on the baulk line, you will, from those strokes which are made off the top cushion, gain a useful knowledge of angles. But these "one ball" exercises demand a good deal of patience, and at first it is remarkable how seldom the ball will stop anywhere near the desired spot.
• The first account of any public billiard match ever published in the daily press of this country appeared in "Bell's Life" on the 22nd of February, 1852.
• Can anyone say why the butt of a billiard cue is flattened on one side? Ask this question in an ordinary billiard room and see how many people can even guess at the answer. Yet the explanation is very simple. At one time many strokes were allowed to be played with the butt of the cue, and a writer of fifty years ago says: "The butt or handle should be well flattened on one side, in order that it may be used to strike with when necessary." Of course, strokes of this type have long since been barred, but, like the buttons on the back of our frock coats, the flattened butt remains unchanged after it has ceased to be of the least use.
• The Rev. J. T. Shaw, of the Methodist Mission at Leeds, stated that he is starting a billiard table in the Mission premises, and that he has discovered that a man can make a good break at billiards and yet be a good Methodist.
• In his match with Taylor in January, 1877, Cook made his 1,000 in 1 hour 8 minutes. W. S. Stanley is credited with making his 1,000 inside the hour, spotting his own ball every time. Roberts played a 1,000 in 1 hour 10 minutes in Australia, 1876. Timbrell at Liverpool in 1873 made a break of 896 (296 spots) under the hour.