Modern Billiards / A Complete Text-Book of the Game, Containing Plain and Practical Instructions How to Play and Acquire Skill at This Scientific Amusement

by Benjamin Garno

1864.

First Technically Public Contest. Irving Hall, N. Y. City, afternoon of April 8th.—$250 a side, 6 × 12 four-pocket table, in aid of the Workingwomen’s Protective Union. Peter D. Braisted, Jr., 100; Wm. H. Freeman, 79. Players were not of the first class, and hence runs and averages were not tallied for publication.

There had, of course, been many earlier match-contests, both amateur and professional; but those and scores of others before them were of the nature of billiard-room contests, with the exception that Michael Phelan and Ralph Benjamin’s in Philadelphia, in 1857, was a formal match, although not public, each principal being limited to a certain number of friends as spectators.