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1. CONDITIONS - It is no use trying to play billiards-"on a cloth untrue, with a twisted cue, and elliptical billiard balls", as W. S. Gilbert has it. Billiards is essentially a game of precision, and to play it at all well you must have the right implements to play with. A cue of your own is not a luxury, it is as much a necessity as his own clubs are to a golfer.

Of late years, Willie Smith has set the fashion for a heavy cue tipped with a brass ferrule. His cue weighs 18 oz. John Roberts said: "As regards the weight of a cue, I think 15 oz. to 16 oz. is heavy enough for anyone.

2. STRIKE A Ball - There are a few people who have a natural cue action which enables them to strike a billiard ball properly without any training. This applies to about one player in a million, I should say, the remainder have to be taught how to hold a cue and swing it to advantage. The first thing I want you to understand is that you must strike your ball so that you make it both move and spin.

For plain ball shots, the spin will be directly forward. If you put side on your ball, the spin will be in the direction of the side imparted.

3. WHERE TO HIT - To begin with, I want you to understand how much of the surface of a billiard ball you really can hit. This is a good deal less than is often supposed. If you look at Fig. 3, which depicts a ball of standard size, the black portion of the diagram shows as much of the ball as you can hit effectively.

That is quite enough for any stroke you are likely to want. If you can hit your ball fairly in its centre, that will do splendidly for a multitude of plain-ball strokes. If you hit it as far to the right or left as the black circle indicates, you will be able to impart enough right or left side for any stroke on the table.

4. BALL-TO-BALL - A little thought will show that no man can calculate the exact number of ball-to-ball contacts utilized in billiard playing. They are infinite, and are the main cause of that variety which is the great charm of the game. But in a playing sense, for instructional purposes, it is usual to divide the object-ball into certain sections, and to explain what happens when the different ball-to-ball contacts are established. Figures 7-11 show a range of ball-to-ball contacts which can be practiced with every advantage.

5. MORE BALL-TO-BALL - Figure 8 shows the most important ball-to-ball contact in the game of billiards. It is the half-ball stroke, and is made by aiming through the centre of your ball to the extreme edge of the object-ball. If you do this and strike your ball truly in its centre, the angle your ball will take after contact with the object-ball is known as the natural angle. It never varies unless you use side, screw, or forcing strength, and is in such constant request that I suppose I must score more than half my points in match play by the half-ball stroke, or very slight departures from it.

6. CANNONS - I have discovered that a change is useful when training my pupils. There is no denying the fact that the road to billiard proficiency is rather dull and wearisome until success draws near. Cue-swinging and the playing of plain-ball strokes are extremely apt to pall. A billiard hero would stick to them with Excelsior-like fortitude and reap his reward at the end, for they are the indispensable fundamentals of billiard playing.

7. LOSING HAZARDS - In this chapter I am taking you back on the broad path of billiard progress.

Those all-round cannons and screw cannons, which I have dealt with in various other chapters of this book, are invariably extremely useful when you want them, and a working knowledge of the "drop cannon", which I went to some trouble to describe in the previous chapter, is something more than useful. But losing hazards are the acknowledged mainstay of English billiards. Every time you go in-off a ball you are allowed to place your ball where you please in the baulk half-circle.

8. WINNING HAZARDS - In the last chapter I was dealing with losing hazards and a series of fine ball-to-ball contacts with the spotted red. If, however, you gradually move your cue-ball away from the top cushion, sooner or later you will bring it to a point from which you had better try to pocket the red instead of attempting to go in-off it. A little further, and you have the spot-stroke position from which my father scored so many thousands of points.

9. MORE CANNONS - After your work with the red ball, which you must persevere with even if it is irksome to begin with, you may relax for a while by turning temporarily to a few shots of a more spectacular type. The first of these will test two things-your power of cue and the quality of the cushions of the table on which you play the shot. Figure 29 shows the stroke. The cue-ball is 9 1/2 inches from the side cushion, and a foot from the baulk cushion. The first object-ball is 9 inches from the side cushion and a foot from the cue-ball.

10. BILLIARD KNOWLEDGE - The average amateur really wants to know two things about his billiards; first, what he can do; secondly, what he cannot do. Perhaps my meaning would be better expressed if I said that it will pay the average amateur if he knows what it will profit him to attempt, and what he had better leave alone. This does not apply exclusively, or even mainly, to individual strokes. As regards these, I think that a bold policy is the best.

11. SAFETY PLAY - Safety first " is doubtless an excellent motto in many respects, but I query it in a billiard sense. Safety play at billiards is something of a paradox. It seems easy, and it is easy within strict limitations.

But when it is taken beyond the fairly obvious, safety play is the most difficult and problematical part of billiard playing. Suppose, for example, you are confronted by the position shown in Fig. 37.

12. BAULKS - As regards single-baulks made by giving a miss in baulk-the big question always is-how will you stand if your opponent replies by running a coup ? This will compel you to play at the red, and unless you can see daylight in that direction, you should be very chary of giving a miss in baulk which leaves the red in play.

Leaving a single-baulk by means of a stroke on the red is quite another matter. Should your opponent reply with a miss or a coup, you have the right to return the compliment, leaving him to be brought up by the rule governing the limitation of misses.

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.

14. USE OF SIDE - Old-world cue-men, those of the time of Kentfield and Dufton, used to play what they called "hazards by the twist". Under this general heading they appear to have included all pocket-strokes, other than those played plain-ball.

I am inclined to regret that the phrase has entirely died out. It may have been general to a fault, but it certainly had the great merit of marking a sharp line between plain-ball strokes and those which demand the use of side, screw, or top, especially side.

15. JENNIES - Figure 49 shows a more familiar type of long jenny than the one dealt with in my last chapter. This is all to the good, as the average long jenny, when played as it should be, is round about as easy as that shown in Fig. 48 is undeniably difficult. Yet the ordinary hundred-upper seems to think there is something weird about a long jenny, and never fails to applaud the stroke when he sees a professional make it. Really, if you bring the red ball a few inches nearer baulk than the centre-spot, just where a natural angle loser into a middle pocket is not play-able, the long half-ball loser from hand into a top pocket wants more making than an ordinary long jenny ever does, and I have no two opinions regarding which stroke I would sooner face. Just place the balls and try the shots over for yourself.

16. MORE JENNIES - In addition to the examples dealt with in my preceding chapter, there is a very short jenny possible occasionally when the object-ball happens to be tight against the side cushion in the direction of baulk and only a few inches from the middle pocket.

When you play this shot you have barely to graze the object-ball, as nearly missing it as you can. Put plenty of pocket side on your ball, and play a brisk, nippy stroke which sends your ball into the pocket like a flash.

17. SCREW AND SIDE - When you play the middle pocket loser shown in Fig. 52, it is very possible that someone may tell you that you play the stroke too hard, and that it ought to be played at correct strength to bring the red into middle pocket position of the top cushion only without bringing it in and out of baulk. I admit that it is distinctly possible to make the loser in this way, especially if the cloth is new and has a heavy nap on it.

18. CONCERNING ANGLES - It is an old saying in billiard circles, and a very true one, that to be anything of an adept at the game a man must know-"the angles of the table". With all due respect to the mathematical experts, I do not think it is much use studying these angles on the blackboard. The factors are too variable for strict scientific demonstration, and the only way to study the angles of billiards to any playing purpose is to do so, cue in hand, at the table.

19. THREE-BALL CONTROL - By three-ball control I mean that correct handling of all three balls in cannon play to which I referred at the end of my last chapter. It is admittedly a difficult thing to do. When seen to perfection, it shows you Tom Newman at his best, as there can be no doubt that his magical control of all three balls in cannon play is the strongest feature of his wonderful billiards. In this respect he is indisputably the greatest player the game has ever seen; and I write thus without the slightest wish to disparage his all-round ability.

20. MORE THREE-BALL - A Curious thing about billiards is the ever-recurring tendency various strokes have to appear, possibly a little varied, in different parts of the table. The uninitiated spectator realized this when he remarked: "From what I can see of it, billiards is the same stroke played over and over again." Well, it is not that, not by a very long way, but there is enough in the idea to be worth bearing in mind in practical billiards, because it cultivates the useful habit of keeping a sharp look-out for strokes which are more alike than they appear to be on the surface, and are therefore amenable to a playing method they all have in common.

21. CANNON PLAY - When I am giving billiard lessons, I often ask my pupils to play a stroke in "their own way". This teaches me something, showing me plenty of faults it is my business to eradicate. A favourite test stroke of mine in this connection, is the cannon shown in Fig. 71. Whenever I set this up for a beginner to attempt, it is long odds that he will try to make a floppy kind of run-through cannon at slow strength, or else, if he happens to be exceptionally keen-sighted, he will attempt a fine cannon direct from red to white .

22. SPECTACULAR STROKES - Stroke shown in Fig. 77 is, perhaps, JL more useful than spectacular. It illustrates one of the many cannons made by playing off a cushion before striking the first object-ball. Both object-balls lie almost midway between the billiard spot and the pyramid spot, one on each side of the table. The red is 2 inches from the right-side cushion, and the white 41/2 inches from the left-side cushion.

23. COMMON FAULTS - In billiard playing, so very much depends on the avoidance of all too common faults, that I think this matter deserves a chapter to itself.

It may be that sundry matters now dealt with have already been touched upon here and there, as my book progressed. If so, I am by no means sorry to refer to them again in a clear and concrete form. My experience as a billiard coach teaches me that, if given time, oft-repeated instruction is sure to sink in; but that "once telling", during the course of a lesson or two, is very apt to slip out of the memory of most men; although there are exceptional individuals who will retain instruction so imparted.

THE END