“Plate” Snooker—A New Game
The Billiard Player. December, 1933
To the Editor, Billiard Player.
As a regular reader of the Billiard Player, who finds the illustrated descriptions of your correspondents’ strokes most interesting, I am encouraged to submit a short description of a game we play at the Unionist Club, Cheadle, Stoke-on-Trent, which I admit falls rather under the heading of “entertaining and amusing” than “instructive.”
We call it “Plate,” and find it excellent fun for two, three or four players.
Ingredients: one table, one set of billiard balls, a few cues, a shillingsworth of copper in the trouser pocket, and a serving tray borrowed from the steward (one of those affairs supplied by the public benefactors, Messrs. Bass and/or Worthington, to wit).
The plate or tray is placed rim downwards accurately over the middle spot (we mark the cloth faintly with chalk where the rim faces the two middle pockets, to save constant measuring), and each player uses the plain ball.
The spot white commences on the pyramid spot and the red on its proper spot, and the game is virtually “all-in” billiards of 21 or 25 up by arrangement, each player putting a penny on the tray by way of commencement.
The sole aim, apart from scoring when the opportunity occurs, is to snooker the next player—reasonably easy of accomplishment, but decidedly difficult at times to get out of.
If the snookered player fails to make contact with one of the other balls, he wipes off his score, and contributes a penny. The same penalty applies if he touches the plate with any of the three balls or his cue. A ball resting on the rim of the plate after a foul is spotted, but if such an action snookers the next player, both balls are snookered, and the striker plays from hand (in the “D” as at commencement of the game).
A further contribution of one penny per capita, and off we go again. Great fun!
A. C. HOLBROOK.
Administrator’s Note: It is submitted that this article would be better suited to the ‘Smiling’ section, however it has been published here as it is, after all, a snooker variant.