Fig. 11
The subsequent history of the pockets is an interesting commentary on the labours of the committee. As they had expected, the spot stroke soon failed to draw, and for exhibition purposes it is, in 1895, as dead as Julius Cæsar. But the tight pocket failed to gain popularity. Here and there a more than usually gifted amateur erected one for his own amusement; in one or two instances an enterprising billiard-room proprietor, who had other tables to fall back upon, tried one for an experiment. But these tables are and must be, for all time, caviare to the general. The reduced Ｄ has never found a place on ordinary tables, so that the result of the committee’s work is that the spot has gone, and the championship match, if there ever be one, must be played with the three-inch pocket.
Fig. 12
Quite recently another attempt to secure uniformity has been made by the Billiard Association. Their committee, recognising the fact that the public would have nothing to say to a tight pocket, and taking a 3⅝-inch pocket as a fair average size, caused templates to be made of those dimensions, and decided that tables made with pockets accurately fitted to the aforesaid templates should be called ‘Standard Association Tables.’ In two minor respects these pockets differ slightly from what, for want of a better word, we may call ‘ordinary’ pockets—first, the shoulders of the cushions are struck with a rounder curve; second, the outer edge of the fall of the slate at the middle pocket falls slightly within the inner line of the cushion, as shown in fig. 11, where A A is the line of the cushion, C the cloth, and P the middle pocket. From this sketch it will be seen that the difficulty of middle-pocket jennies is sensibly increased.
Fig. 13
Drawings of the Championship pockets (figs. 12, 13) and the Standard Association pockets (figs. 14, 15) are here inserted in order that the reader may compare them for himself. The drawings of the Championship pockets are taken direct from the templates in the possession of Messrs. Burroughes & Watts, and those of the Standard pockets from templates the property of Messrs. Wright & Co.
An intending purchaser has, then, to decide for himself whether he will have a Standard pocket table; an ordinary 3⅝-pocket table (and in this case the pockets of different makers will vary slightly in size and shape); or, lastly, a 3–inch pocket Championship table.