Every Boy's Book: A Complete Encyclopædia of Sports and Amusements

by Unknown

If the ball be pocketed after having made a carom or winning hazard, the player cannot score the count he may have made.

A miss, or a failure on the part of the player to strike any other ball with his own, counts one for the opponent.

The word carom, used in this portion of the work, is derived from the French word “carombolage.” In England the word “cannon” is used, an evidently corrupt derivation.

In learning all games of billiards practical experience is the best teacher. No amount of intellectual study can impart to a novice the manual dexterity and adroitness essential to the display of the beauties of the game. But months of labour and learning by practical experience alone may be avoided by learning thoroughly beforehand the principles of the science afterwards to be practised as an art.

Among the most important things in billiards is a good attitude, and to attain this should be the student’s first effort. Good attitude is the ‘groundwork’ of a player’s success. If his attitude be ungraceful, viz. strained or unnatural, his playing will assuredly be unreliable.

The student’s attitude must, in the first place, be perfectly easy and natural. His left foot should be slightly advanced, in a straight line, the right drawn backwards and pointing outwards, to the extent and at the angle most familiar and convenient to the player. The left arm should be extended and supported on the table by the tips of the fingers and the junction of the palm and the wrist (which position of the hand constitutes the natural bridge). His body should be perfectly balanced, and should form an acute angle with the side of the table at which he stands. The tapering end of the cue should rest in the natural groove formed by the elevation of the thumb; the thick end should be grasped in the right hand, loosely while being drawn back preparatory to the stroke, and firmly at the moment of contact with the ball. The cue should be held in a perfectly horizontal position, except in the case of some particular strokes, which will be described in the proper place. Beginners should pay especial attention to this. It should be impelled chiefly by the fore-arm, while the body should remain perfectly steady, as the slightest swaying motion of it will give a false direction to the stroke. The speed of the cue, and not the weight of the body, gives strength to the stroke.

In the [instructions] in the game contained in the body of this work, the fundamental principles of the game are fully exemplified and enlarged upon. But there are exceptions to these fundamental rules to which we now briefly refer, and among them may be prominently named the results of the different degrees of strength with which the cue ball is struck, inasmuch as important modifications of the angles of incidence and reflexion are produced by the varieties of strength in the impulsion of the ball.

It is a general law that the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflexion; this law is, however, modified in billiards by the degree of strength with which the cue ball is struck. The angle which the cue-ball will take after striking a cushion, being materially altered by the force imparted to it, the greater the strength the more acute will the angle of reflexion become.

When the ball, instead of being played against a fixed and inert body, such as a cushion, is played against a moveable sphere, such as itself, the angle formed by the line of direction of the object-ball, and the line of the subsequent course of the cue-ball, will be more obtuse the greater the strength communicated to the cue-ball.