Jottings of the Month

There is no better billiard lesson to the observant and
serious amateur than match play by leading cuemen.

Mrs. King retains the American women’s pool championship
by defeating Miss Clearwater by the total score of
400 to 307.

Mr. Backhaus, the pianist, when introduced to Gray,
after witnessing one of his displays, said “I was going to
challenge you, but as I play on” ivories “and you with
composition, that is impossible.”

Until Gray makes breaks of eight and nine hundred
points off the red with ivory balls, I shall cherish the belief
that it is a far simpler task to maintain a long sequence
of losing hazards or “in offs” with composition balls than
with the natural article.—H. W. Stevenson, in Fry’s
Magazine.

When Stevenson suffered bereavement and had to stop
play in the first Billiards Control championship, Inman
declined to claim the game, and now Harverson has
adopted the same course following upon Stevenson’s illness
during the tournament. Sportsmanship in billiards is the
salt of the game.

Mr. H. A. O. Lonsdale stales that one side of an ivory
ball is so much heavier than the other that off the light
side the cue ball comes with a squarish angle, whereas it
runs through ‘the heavy side three-quarters. If this were
so, the, game of billiards could not be played at all, and
the ivory ball would be a worthless article. As a fact an
ivory ball can be so true that, If dropped into a glass of
water spot up, it will be found to retain its perpendicular
at the bottom.

The Burroughes & Watts’ miners’ championship in the
North of England is being played under Billiards Control
Club rules. Home and home games are played, the preliminary
rounds being 400 points up, the winner being the
player who scores the largest aggregate in the two games.

The first prize to the winner of the combined event will be
the title of champion of the North and £15; the runner-up
will hold the title of champion of his county and receive
£7 10s. A prize of £2 2s. will be given to the player
making the highest break above 50, for which prize the
two champions will not be eligible.

Your ideal billiard-room is quietly fitted up. In it there
should be nothing to arrest the attention of the stranger
entering for the first time. The table gives the keynote
to the rest of the furniture. If the walls are panelled in
stained wood, photographs and etchings might be framed
into the panelling. The smoking-room being ousted from
home after home; its denizens are being driven back and
back like dying tribes of Red Indians before the paleface;
and at last there Is nothing for the disinherited but to meet
and smoke a sad cigar in dining-room or billiard-room.

In those retrograde establishments where the apartment
still survives man should insist upon Oriental furnishings
with thick carpets and deep armchairs and a repressed
colour-scheme throughout,—Vanity Fair.

In the Soho Square tournament Reece achieved one of
his great ambitions by beating Inman in a long game.
Receiving 1,250 in 9,000, he won by 821.

A royal warrant of appointment has been granted by
his Majesty the King to Messrs. Burroughes & Watts.
Ltd, as billiard table makers to his Majesty.

What is the maximum speed at which 1,000 can be compiled
on the billiard table? Lovejoy made one of his
hundreds against Inman in six minutes. But will 1,000
points ever be scored within the hour?

Before taking to the “all red route” Gray, as a boy of
twelve or thirteen, sustained a compound fracture of the
left arm through a fall while jumping in the park, and as
soon as it was set, as the arm was still rather stiff, the
doctor recommended him to play billiards. That was how
he began.

Messrs. Burroughes & Watts have decided, in view of
the General Election and the near approach of Christmas,
and owing to their Newcastle match room being engaged
for several dates before the end of the year, not to commence
with the local professional tournament until the
New Year.

The Manchester Evening Chronicle, in its Billiard Notes
of November 26, did The Billiard Monthly the honour of
paraphrasing a great portion of our article by Mr. Duncan,
barrister-at-law, on “Billiards and the Law.” If The
Billiard Monthly had been mentioned by the writer, the
honour paid to us would have been enhanced.

Professionals and amateurs meet on the cricket field-;
why not at the billiard table? It would be good for both
and good for billiards. Of course, the amateur would
derive no monetary profit from such encounters But he
would derive great technical benefit. Indeed, it may be
said that an amateur cannot improve beyond a certain
point without serious play in long matches.

We are afraid that Gray is a little out in his billiard
history. To an interviewer he said “I used to practise
losing hazards into a guarded top pocket without touching
a peg placed against one of the shoulders. I mastered it
in the end, but It wasn’t easy, and sometimes I used to
bless—or otherwise—the very name of Kew.” “Kew?”
interrogated the interviewer. “Yes; the man who invented
billiards,” explained Gray. “Don’t you remember?

William Kew lived in the middle of the sixteenth century,
and was a pawnbroker. When trade was slack, he used
to take down the three balls of his sign and push them
about the counter with a yard-measure into boxes fixed at
the sides. In time the idea of a fenced table with pockety
suggested itself, and hence the game of bill-yards—from
‘William’ and the ‘yard-measure’ he used—while ‘cue’
is only another spelling of his surname, and ‘cannons’ are
so-called because it was a clergyman who invented them.”

Or has George Gray a keen sense of humour and enjoyed
poking a little covert fun at his tormentor?