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

1878.

First Public Match Contest. Bumstead Hall, Boston, February 21st.—$250 a side, Jacob Schaefer discounting John H. Flack. Schaefer’s actual score at close, 300; average of all points he made, 2.50; best run, 35. Flack’s total, 299; best run, 8. Time, 5h. 50m.

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First Tournament. Begun in a St. Louis billiard room, March 14th.—The games, as reported, were 400 points up, and the best averages of the four prize-winners (Frank Day, S. G. Baldwin, Eugene Wolff, and Edward Warner) 3.60, 2.98, 2.14, and 3.15, with 23, 18, 14, and 38 as their high runs respectively. Figures sometimes need vouchers. It was not until three years later that the finest professionals in the land were able to equal some of the foregoing, and not until 1883 that such professionals ventured upon longer games in tournament than 200 points, and then on a 4½ × 9 table.