THOUGH they are being rather freely used just now, I cannot believe there is any permanent popularity in store for the Riming- ton-Wilson rules. With all deference to the distinguished amateur who framed them, I much prefer the old laws, and think them far more in accordance with the true spirit of billiards. Indeed, I can see nothing but harm in the alterations Mr. Wilson has lent his name to, and I hope that after this season the professionals, one and all, will go back to the orthodox code.
The practical abolition of the safety miss seems to me wrong in principle, restricting as it does the finesse of the game, and more than that it involves great hardship to the inferior player. It is to my mind perfectly absurd that when the white ball has gone down - either by accident or design - a man should, whatever the position or the state of the score, have to play at the red. This provision alone might, with a moderate player opposed to a good one, cause scores of games to be lost. Everyone knows how in a handicap a long start man, with a good knowledge of the game but little execution, will often, by means of judicious misses, cramp a player who is giving him points at the rate of fifty in a hundred. Another thing that struck me when I was playing the other night under the Rimington-Wilson rules is the extreme severity of the penalties. The player who in attempting a thin loser runs a coup not only loses three points, but, which is far more serious, the balls have to be spotted with a certain score on for the opponent. In this case a player is punished far too severely for an accident which, by stopping a break, may in itself have cost him a hundred points. If suggested by anyone other than a first-class expert such a penalty as this would not have been thought worthy of a moment's consideration, let alone given practical trial.