BILLIARDS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 809, 1 November 1929, Page 7

BILLIARDS

MORE POSITIONAL STROKES By RISO LEVI ‘Author or '•Billiards: The Strokes o] .he Game.” ami “Billiards l or The Million.” (Copt right] When the balls get a bit out of hand, a good player always tries to get up position for a drop cannon, be- : cause the setting up of this position ! enables him to get the balls under control again. Drop cannons, with the red on the I spot. while quite simple just as ! strokes, require w ell handling if good I position is to be set up or maintained ! by them. They must be played with j very correct pace to give good results, and any kind of contact with the I second ball—the red—will not do. | Also, the first object ball has sometimes to be taken half-ball and sometimes fuller than half-ball, so that it i j»t surprising that the ordinary player so often gets a bad result from one of these positions. His chief mistake is that he generally plays them with too much pace, so that even when the red on the spot is taken correctly it travels too far to leave anything. There is. however, one particular ltir.d of drop cannon which even a very I moderate player should be able to play j correctly. This is illustrated on Diet- 1 gram 24

Here, a simple ball-to-ball cannon doubles the red across the table, and the chief thing in the stroke is to regulate the strength so that the red does not travel from one side of the table to the other with too much pace. In order to give the red a good line ot travel a capable cueman plays to take it half-ball or a shade thinner or fuller than half-ball, according to its position—the angle at which the cue ball is thrown off is practically the 6ame in all strokes in which the contact is appreciably like half-ball—but only a first-class player can purposely take a distant ball just slightly thinner or fuller, as the case may be, than half-ball. In cannons which are at all ! like the stroke illustrated on Diagram 24. however, the ordinary player will, far more often than not, have good | position for the next stroke if he plays a plain half-ball stroke with good strength, and therefore he has not to trouble about any great nicety #f contact with the red.

DIAGRAM 25 When the red is in baulk and a Capable cueman is playing a series of strokes off the white, his break v ery frequently comes to a termination by failure at some more or less difficult cannon which he has gone °ut for, as soon as he has lost position for an in-off. When the red ball is toot far from the baulk line he may attempt to bring the object white down the table to within a few inches the line, as the result of some <entre-poeket stroke, but there is always the risk of causing the ball to cross the line when playing to bring h down to its vicinity. When, how®ver - the red is in the vicinity of a haulk pocket, a good player frequently does not wait until the object white is out of play as regards any in-off be*ore playing a cannon. Instead, be filav play a cannon which is very reasonably on, even though he could have continued with another in-off. One of these positions is shown on ftoagram 25, the object white being (I °se to the central line of the table a tod a few inches below the centre f Pot. The long top-pocket in-off with ? so low’ down is never particularly fancied by the best of players, though, of course, first-rate cuemen fl o not very often fail at one of these Strokes. The cannon illustrated on the diaP*}® is by no means a difficult stroke, todeed, many players will find it considerably easier than the long in-off. . should be played with a little runside—left side here, as this is •tonning side off the cushion, and in m J? ns off tho cushion it is the let anc * not f he object ball, which J-termines which side* is running side a nd the object, bail should be taken shade thinner than half-ball. Next Article: A hundred IN' FOUR MINUTES