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Chapter 13. ENTERPRISING BILLIARDS

Enterprise invariably pays better than safety in billiards. One thing is absolutely certain, and that is you cannot win by playing wholly and consistently on the defensive. Nevertheless, your enterprise must always be tinctured with a certain amount of reasonable restraint. It is absolute madness to go out for anything or everything and chance the consequences merely from force of habit, and yet this is a habit which many amateurs indulge in. If there is "nothing on" they just let fly and hope something will turn up. That, however, is not billiards. The state of the game has a great bearing on the matter. You will do everything in your power even to hit a ball if your opponent needs but one point for game and is unkind enough to present you with a double-baulk.

In a lesser degree, if you must make a break to have any chance of winning a game which is going decidedly against you, it is the game to take risks which you would not face if the game was even, or more or less in your favour.

When to Take Chances

Figure 45 shows a case in point. A double-baulk is all you have to play at. If the score was "99 all" in a hundred up, I should advise you to play a sharp shot just clear of the baulk-line with enough side on your ball to come back off the side cushion and hit the red. This is the best chance you have of avoiding the fatal miss. You ought to hit that red nine times out of ten if you are anything of a cueman. But don't ask me to tell you what will happen when you do hit it. If the fates are uncommonly kind, you may run to game "with an unfinished break of three". With ordinary luck, you may reckon on smashing into the red and leaving nothing much on. If you are unlucky, you may leave the red over one pocket and the white over another. It all depends on the fortune of war. You must take your fate in both hands and leave it at that, summoning up all your skill to make sure of giving the red a shrewd knock, the harder the better within reason-do not play too hard, however, or you may make your ball jump completely off the table.

But if the score were 99 to 98 in your favour, it would be very bad billiards indeed to take your chance with the pot-shot at the red.

Then you should give a gentle miss an inch or two out of baulk to leave all three balls dead in line. As you want but one for game, your opponent cannot give an answering miss.

His best chance of a score is a tremendously difficult hazard into one of the middle pockets. He might pot the red in a top pocket if he strikes a wonderful winner. He might screw-back into a baulk pocket if he has plenty of luck, pluck, and cue-power; he will need all three in abundance to do it. All these shots are possible, and there are others-a wizard with a cue might even make a masse cannon of sorts. But the chances are heavily against a score of any kind, especially between hundred-up performers, and the odds are that you will have a good chance to make the point you want when your adversary fails at some ambitious attempt to score.

Another Aspect

Suppose, however, that you wanted forty or fifty for game while the other man needed but a point or two. Then, to do any good, you must force a break, which is anything but an inviting prospect from a double-baulk. It is even less inviting than usual when such a double-baulk as the specimen shown in my diagram has to be mastered. The best stroke you can try for is the cannon played in the manner illustrated. Spot your ball at the end of the baulk-line, use plenty of running side to help your ball round the table, and strike the first cushion at the point indicated in my diagram. Then, with luck, you will make the cannon, and, with more luck, leave a break-building position. It is futile to ignore the element of luck which enters into the making of cannons off double-baulks.

The champion himself could not be anything like sure of making the cannon we have just dealt with. I want you to bear this in mind, and also to remember that, according to the state of the game, three distinct shots are called for when handling this double-baulk position.

How to Tackle Double-Baulks

The all-round cannon shown in Fig. 45 illustrates a method of tackling double-baulks which can be worked out to cover the whole of baulk. This is done by changing the position of the cue-ball and varying the spot on the first cushion you play at. If you experiment in this manner, moving your ball by degrees until the centre spot is reached, you will learn a useful lesson about the angles of the tables so far as they concern the mastering of double-baulks. But however much you learn, you cannot hope to reduce these "all-rounders" to an exact proposition.

The most exact method of tackling a ball or balls in baulk is direct off the top cushion when the Position gives you a chance of so doing. This is always the case when the red is over a baulk pocket. Then, by placing your ball on the spot nearest to the red, and playing off the top cushion without an atom of side on your ball, you should pot the red every time in the baulk pocket. By working on this principle as far as you can, you will rob many a baulk of its terrors. Alternatively, you may do so by playing just clear of the baulk-line with side on your ball to bring it back into baulk.

When you do this, it is a mistake to attempt to put varying amounts of side on your ball with the idea of varying its direction as it returns into baulk. This is best accomplished by putting the same amount of side on your ball every time, and varying the point on the side cushion you play at in order to take your ball to any desired place in baulk. In this way, with a little practice, you ought to be sure of at least smashing up a good leave your adversary has planned for himself, and that is something well worth doing. Last of all, in point of general reliability, I place the "all round" method of tackling double-baulks.

It is spectacular, very effective when it succeeds, and quite good billiards as far as it goes. But I prefer one of the simpler shots played off a single cushion, and advise you to display a similar preference whenever the leave permits it.

Wisdom in Choice of Strokes Billiard enterprise is not confined to the purposeful tackling of double-baulks. It is evidenced in other ways to greater profit. Figure 46 shows what I mean. The red ball is close to the middle pocket, the cue-ball is in hand, and the red is so favourably placed that you can do almost what you please with it. You can go in-off it, or cut it into the middle pocket, and you can make the in-off in many ways.

Usually, even among amateurs who ought to play better billiards, the red loser is made slowly with the idea of dribbling the red over the top pocket, thus leaving it somewhere in the vicinity of the cross in my diagram. This is a bad stroke, simply because a very much better one can be made if you are enterprising enough to play it. Instead of placing your ball on the end of the baulk-line, and crawling in-off to send the red ball slowly up towards the top pocket, you should spot your ball as shown in my diagram, and play fully enough on the red to follow through into the pocket, playing with freedom enough to bring the red into position off the side and top cushions. Here, yet again, it is a matter of letting the cue do the work. No side is required on the cue-ball. It is only necessary to hit that ball correctly a little above its centre, or even dead centrally if your cueing is good enough, and you can make this lucrative hazard with supreme ease. Do so, and then try the other way.

Try each method six times in succession, and you will see for yourself how much better it is to play the shot in the manner I advise. Very probably, if the white were near the billiard spot, it might pay you to be enterprising enough to cut the red in the pocket instead of going in-off it. If you do this, you should have ideal spot-end position, which you will utilize to get back to the open game by the shortest and most profitable route if you take my advice. The reason why you may find this winning hazard pay better than the loser is because the white lies near the billiard spot, where it is likely to be in the way if you attempt a break of red losers.

There is not much in it, but we all like a change at times, and if you feel like putting the red down under the circumstances I have described, by all means do so. Incidentally, this is a favourite scoring position with Willie Smith. When he has a leave like that illustrated in Fig 46, and the white near the billiard spot, sometimes he will pot the red, sometimes he will go in-off it-I believe he follows the whim of the moment. He can well afford to do so, as either stroke leaves him a break - building position he can handle supremely well.

An "Enter-prising" Stroke

Figure 47 shows a shot more like the sort of thing usually described as "enterprising". It is a five-cushion cannon, and a very "hot" one. The main difficulty is that check side must be used to bring your ball away at the correct angle for the cannon, and as this tends to retard the run of your ball, neither must you use too much of it; nor must you hit the first object-ball too thickly and take too much pace out of your own ball by reason of the over-full contact.

This is another test of free cueing, and is worth trying merely on this account. It is a good shot because it eliminates the risk there is of potting the white if you attempt the screw cannon from white to red via the top cushion. There is also a sporting chance of your ball dropping nicely on the red and tapping it over the top pocket when the five-cushion cannon is completed. This stroke also takes the white over towards the red, the screw shot splits the balls, from which it is evident that, as usual, enterprise pays when everything is taken into account.

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