The Billiard Association. New Code of Rules.
Liverpool Evening Express – Friday 30 September 1898
The Billiard Association
New Code of Rules.
The Billiard Association have, for the second time, drawn up a code of rules intended to govern the operations of those who find recreation on “the board of green cloth.” The rules differ in several important particulars from those which the association framed and published a few years ago. Chief among them ate those designed to prohibit the push and spot strokes. Hitherto these strokes have been the cause of considerable controversy among the leading professional players. Their formal abolition now will be generally approved, though differences of opinion will be entertained as to whether the best method of preventing the “spot” stroke has been found in the new regulation dealing with it. This provides that after two spot-strokes in succession, unaccompanied by any other score, have been made, the red Ball shall be placed on the centre spot, or, if that be occupied, on the pyramid spot. Thu chief objections to the change are that it interferes with “top-of-the-table play,” and substitutes the possibility of monotony in losing hazards for the spot stroke itself. The arrangement usually adopted in spot-barred matches of permitting the red ball to be placed on its natural spot for any other stroke than the spot-stroke has worked well enough in professional contests, and might have been formally incorporated into the new rules with advantage. The “jamming” of balls in the jaws of a pocket, by means of which phenomenal cannon breaks have been registered, is prohibited in law as it has been in recent years in practice. It is now provided that in such circumstances the red ball shall be spotted and the non-striker’s ball placed on the centre spot, the striker playing from baulk. There are other changes more or less technical, which are obviously due to the influence of professional players. If the new rules should result in bringing about a real contest for the billiard championship, about which so much controversy has been heard in recent years, all interested in billiards will be delighted. But it is quite another mutter to assume that the rules of the Billiard Association, a body which is representative chiefly of professional players and a few billiard-table manufacturers, will be accepted without dumur by clubs and amateur players as a whole. What is needed is the formation of a representative association on lines similar to the M.C.C., the Jockey Club, the St. Andrews, and kindred bodies having control of various popular pastimes. The time is ripe for the formation of such a body. They would deal not only with ordinary billiards, but with associated games, such as pyramids, pool, Snooker’s pool, and rules having the stamp of such an authority would be accepted with gratitude by players.