Billiards

by William Broadfoot

MARKING BOARD

A good marking-board is essential to the comfort of the players, and the ordinary pattern, as shown in fig. 34, leaves little to be desired. Long games, however, of 400 and 500 up are not uncommon in private rooms in these days, and it would be a slight improvement if some means of scoring hundreds were introduced. I should think two slides similar to the pool slides, with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 underneath, placed above or below each scoring-roller, would meet the case (fig. 35).

Fig. 36

There is another pattern still fairly common which is always a nuisance, for sooner or later a mistake is sure to be made as to the twenties (fig. 36). One or other of the players will forget to move on the twenty marker when he takes the other back to zero; more advanced arithmetic is involved and another objection is that a separate board is required for pool.

Fig. 34

Fig. 35

Fig. 37

Another kind of marker is a nickel-plated one let into the woodwork of the cushions, and worked by pressing a button (fig. 37). Two are placed side by side, one for each player. A further variety of the same kind is a hand marker, which is useful in a country house.