[When not otherwise specified, all play was at ordinary C. C., with three 2⅜ balls on 5 × 10 table, cushion being taken at some time before hitting second object-ball.]
1867.
First Public Exhibition. Opening of Tobin & Bosworth’s Room, Boston, October, 1867.—Played with four balls on a 5½ × 11 four-pocket table, Joseph Dion, of Montreal, defeating John McDevitt, of N. Y. City.
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.
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.
1881.
The Sexton-Schaefer Matches. All independent of one another. First:
Cooper Institute, N. Y. City, February 15th.—$500 a side, Schaefer, 400—3.92—26; Sexton, 396—21.