BILLIARDS.

Grey River Argus, Volume V, Issue 341, 21 March 1868, Page 3

BILLIARDS.

The following remarks form the introduction to a notice in the Saturday Bevieio of a book on billiards by the celebrated player Dufton : — It is somewhat humiliating to reflect that eminence cannot be attained, even in the art of knocking about three ivory balls with a stick, without the devotion of a lifetime. It is the more humiliating when wo consider that in the prosecution of this art not the slightest mental effort is required. Neither chess nor whist can be played even moderately well, by an arrant fool ; but a billiard table will be found in every well-conducted lunatic asylum in the kingdom. Billiards is, in fact, the exact antithesis to chess. The latter brings into play one of the rarest powers of the human mmd — tqe power, namely, of prevision, by which future results are clearly brought within the range of mental vision, and in accordance with which they are inevitably accomplished. The former requires a well-strung and well-disciplined condition of body, so that between hand and eye the most perfect sympathy may exist. Chess is a contest of brains ; billiards, of steady nerves and correct eyesight. Chess, is a great mental; billiards, a great mental effort. And despite all practice and all proficiency, the best billiard players will always be ready to acknowledge that what they actually perform falls vei*y far short of what they see and know ought to be performed. The reason is simply, that a human being can by no amount of hard work convert himself into a machine, and by nothing short of machinery can the operation of billiards be brought to perfection. Take, for example, the spot stroke, that crucial test of a billiard player. Only one man has ever played ie with any famous success, and we believe on one occasion only has that player made a hundred spot strokes consecu- | tively. Now each one of these, individually is easy that a child could do it. The object to which the player devotes years of study is not how to make the winning hazard with certainty — that he could do with his eyes shut — but how to strike his own ball so that he will have a second, and then a third and so on ad infinitum. This again, for each stroke taken individually, is easy. The playing ball has only to be moved a few inches, and not nearly such nice manipulation is required as for other ordinary strokes — for that, notably, which ensures a succession of loosing hazards in the middle pockets, and in which the object ball must be moved twelve feet for every stroke without varying an inch or an inch and a half. The difficulty then of the spot stroke docs not lie in the hazard per se, not in the placing of the playing ball per se, but in the effecting of the two ends simultaneously. Hand and eye must be in most perfect accord, but the strain on the nervous system caused by the effect to control with a single action the movements of the two balls is too great to be resisted for long. Even if the player was allowed to place his own ball where he chose after each hazard, he would still break down ultimately, though he might perform the stroke, thus modified, an immense number of limes. It is curious, howeA r er, that we have generally noticed the spot stroke break ended by a failure in performing the hazard, not by a failure in playing the position. Extra care has been taken to ensure accuracy in what is considered the difficult part of the stroke ; and then, as often happens, the easy part is missed altogether. On the whole, it is not surprisinn that the spot stroke rarely proves remunerative even to ordinary professional players ; whilst with amateurs it is almost a total failure. Nature abhors a monotony and there is nothing so monotonous as a break of winning hazards. We once saw the great player of the age make a collossal score by the spot stroke ; and his performance had the same effect on us that would

have been produced by a song svr.ig entirey on one note, or a sermon preached in one uniform drawl. Wo went fust asleep. For twenty minutes the red ball kept travelling with tlie regularity of clockwork first into the left corner pocket, then into the ritfht. Left, right, lt*ft right ; and when wo woke up ifc was still going on. It was not easy to believe that a human being could almost have made himself so like a machine. The majority of professionals, however, cultivate losing in preference to winning hazards, so much so. that they frequently convert the latter into the former even when there is some little difficulty about the stroke. The probable reason is that it is much less wearisome, and much less fatiguing to the eye, especially in a game of five hundred or a thousand up, to play losing than winning hazards. In whatever position two balls are, there is only point in the object ball that can be struck so ns to produce a winning hazard : assuming of course that, the balls are round, and the table perfectly true. But there are several points in tlie object ball that may equally be struck when a losing hazard is sought for. This may be verified by any one who chooses to place the balls in position for a fair losing hnjsard. He will find that he may make the lvizard by hitting \u& own ball in the centre, or by putting on side, or hy using the reverse side, or by playing fast, or by playing slow, but each time, according sishe strikes his own ball, so will he strike the object ball in a different point. Thus the eye and the hand will bo much less tried than if they were only one point in the object ball which must be hit to effect the hazard. It is from a knowledge of the fact that losing hazard striking admits of a great deal of freedom and variety in the manipulation of the balls, that professional players look to it as the great, strength of their game. We have said that they often convert winning into losing hazards, and they rarely play for canons except as stepping stones to something better. A canon, to the professional mind, is little more than a ne:cus, which prevents the downfall of a bread, and enables a fresh score to be tacked on to it. It links together the different portions of a break, biiit it is not in their eyes a power in itself capable of being worked to great results. Amateurs, on the other hand, prefer canons before any other stroke, not only on account of their prettiness, but also cecause they enjoy dashing the balls about as much as possible, and would fain hit every cushion if th^y could, if only for the sake of getting more out of the table for their money. It may thus be gathered that the characteristic difference between the play of professionals and amateurs can be expressed in a single sentence. Professionals aim not to make strokes, but to leave them ; amateurs aim not to lenve strokes, but to make them. Profesiionals, if they are of any eminence, when once they get a break, play so as to keep leaving themselves so e ( asy that it would not bo possible to miss them. Whon the break appears to be becoming infructuotis, they generally "pot" their adversary's ball, and endeavor to bring their own and the red ball into baulk. If they cannot get at their adversary, they give a quiet miss under some distant cushion. Their brilliant tours de force, their twists, their recoils, and their all-round canons, they mostly keep for thiir pupils. The spectator of an ordinary billiard-match who expects to see miracles performed wiih the balls will be veiy much disappointed. He will see a great deal of cautious skirmishing and fencing, a great deal of fighting for position, and a few large breaks in which strength will be so carefully attended to that the strokes left will require little or no execution. If he wants to see brilliant strokes, any two amateurs who know how to hold their cues, and possess a certain power of wrist, will show plenty of them ; but we have often noticed that a man who is fond of making fancy strokes is very ' apt to lose tlie game.