BILLIARD HISTORY
A Brief History of the Noble Game of Billiards
by Mike Shamos |
 The
history of billiards is long and very rich. The game has been played by
kings and commoners, presidents, mental patients, ladies, gentlemen, and
hustlers alike. It evolved from a lawn game similar to the croquet
played sometime during the 15th century in Northern Europe and probably
in France. Play was moved indoors to a wooden table with green cloth to
simulate grass, and a simple border was placed around the edges. The
balls were shoved, rather than struck, with wooden sticks called
“maces”. The term “billiard” is derived from French, either from the
word “billart”, one of the wooden sticks, or “bille”, a ball.
The game was originally played with two balls on a
six-pocket table with a hoop similar to a croquet wicket and an upright
stick used as a target. During the 18th century, the hoop and target
gradually disappeared, leaving only the balls and pockets. Most of our
information about early billiards comes from accounts of playing by
royalty and other nobles. It has been known as the “Noble Game of
Billiards” since the early 1800’s, but there is evidence that people
from all walks of life have played the game since its inception. In
1600, the game was familiar enough to the public that Shakespeare
mentioned it in Antony and Cleopatra. Seventy-five years later, the
first book of billiard rules remarked of England that there were “few
Towns of note therein which hath not a publick Billiard-Table”.
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Copyright © 1995
All Rights Reserved |
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Equipment |
| The cue stick was
developed in the late 1600’s. When the ball lay near a rail, the
mace was very inconvenient to use because of its large head. In
such a case, the players would turn the mace around and use its
handle to strike the ball. The handle was called a “queue”-
meaning “tail”- from which we get the word “cue”. For a long
time, only men were allowed to use the cue; women were forced to
use the mace because it was felt they were more likely to rip
the cloth with the sharper cue.
Tables originally had flat vertical walls for
rails and their only function was to keep the balls from falling
off. They resembled riverbanks and even used to be called
“banks”. Players discovered that balls could bounce off the
rails and began deliberately aiming at them. Thus a “bank shot”
is one in which a ball is made to rebound from a cushion as part
of the shot.
Billiard equipment improved rapidly in England
after 1800, largely because of the Industrial Revolution. Chalk
was used to increase friction between the ball and the cue stick
even before cues had tips. The leather cue tip, with which a
player can apply side-spin to the ball, was perfected by 1823.
Visitors from England showed Americans how to use spin, which
explains why it is called “English” in the United States but
nowhere else. (The British themselves refer to it as “side”).
The two-piece cue arrived in 1829. Slate became popular as a
material for table beds around 1835. Goodyear discovered
vulcanization of rubber in 1839 and by 1845 it was used to make
billiard cushions. By 1850, the billiard table had essentially
evolved into its current form.
The dominant billiard game in Britain from
about 1770 until the 1920’s was English Billiards, played with
three balls and six pockets on a large rectangular table. A
two-to-one ratio of length to width became standard in the 18th
century. Before then, there were no fixed table dimensions. The
British billiard tradition is carried on today primarily through
the game of Snooker, a complex and colorful game combining
offensive and defensive aspects and played on the same equipment
as English Billiards but with 22 balls instead of three. The
British appetite for Snooker is approached only by the American
passion for baseball; it is possible to see a Snooker
competition every day in Britain. |
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Billiards in the United States |
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How billiards came to America has
not been positively established. There are tales
that it was brought to St. Augustine by the
Spaniards in the 1580’s but research has failed
to reveal any trace of the game there. More
likely it was brought over by Dutch and English
settlers. A number of American cabinetmakers in
the 1700’s turned out exquisite billiard tables,
although in small quantities. Nevertheless, the
game did spread throughout the Colonies. Even
George Washington was reported to have won a
match in 1748. By 1830, despite primitive
equipment, public rooms devoted entirely to
billiards appeared. The most famous of them was
Bassford’s, a New York room that catered to
stockbrokers. Here a number of American versions
of billiards were developed, including Pin Pool,
played with small wooden targets like miniature
bowling pins, and Fifteen-Ball Pool, described
later.
The American billiard industry
and the incredible rise in popularity of the
game are due to Michael Phelan, the father of
American billiards. Phelan emigrated from
Ireland and in 1850 wrote the first American
book on the game. He was influential in devising
rules and setting standards of behavior. An
inventor, he added diamonds to the table to
assist in aiming, and developed new table and
cushion designs. He was also the first American
billiard columnist. On January 1, 1859, the
first of his weekly articles appeared in
Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly. A few months later,
Phelan won $15,000 in Detroit at the first
important stake match held in the United States.
He was a tireless promoter of the game and
created the manufacturing company of Phelan and
Collender. In 1884 the company merged with its
chief competitor, J.M. Brunswick & Balke, to
form the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company,
which tightly controlled all aspects of the game
until the 1950’s.
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Types of Play |
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The dominant American billiard
game until the 1870’s was American Four-Ball
Billiards, usually played on a large (11 or
12-foot), four-pocket table with four balls -
two white and two red. It was a direct extension
of English Billiards. Points were scored by
pocketing balls, scratching the cue ball, or by
making caroms on two or three balls. A “carom”
is the act of hitting two object balls with the
cue ball in one stroke. With so many balls,
there were many different ways of scoring and it
was possible to make up to 13 points on a single
shot. American Four-Ball produced two offspring,
both of which surpassed it in popularity by the
late 1870’s. One, simple caroms played with
three balls on a pocketless table, is sometimes
known as “Straight Rail”, the forerunner of all
carom games. The other popular game was American
Fifteen-Ball Pool, the predecessor of modern
pocket billiards.
The word “pool” means a
collective bet, or ante. Many non-billiard
games, such as poker, involve a pool but it was
to pocket billiards that the name became
attached. The term “poolroom” now means a place
where pool is played, but in the 19th century a
poolroom was a betting parlor for horse racing.
Pool tables were installed so patrons could pass
the time between races. The two became connected
in the public mind, but the unsavory connotation
of “poolroom” came from the betting that took
place there, not from billiards.
Fifteen-Ball Pool was played
with 15 object balls, numbered 1 through 15. For
sinking a ball, the player received a number of
points equal to the value of the ball. The sum
of the ball values in a rack is 120, so the
first player who received more than half the
total, or 61, was the winner. This game, also
called “61-Pool”, was used in the first American
championship pool tournament held in 1878 and
won by Cyrille Dion, a Canadian. In 1888, it was
thought more fair to count the number of balls
pocketed by a player and not their numerical
value. Thus, 14.1 Continuous Pool replaced
Fifteen-Ball Pool as the championship game. The
player who sank the last ball of a rack would
break the next rack and his point total would be
kept “continuously” from one rack to the next.
Eight-Ball was invented
shortly after 1900; Straight Pool followed in
1910. Nine-Ball seems to have developed around
1920. One-Pocket has ancestors that are older
than any of these; the idea of the game was
described in 1775 and complete rules for a
British form appeared in 1869.
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Championship Billiards |
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From 1878 until 1956, pool and
billiard championship tournaments were held
almost annually, with one-on-one challenge
matches filling the remaining months. At times,
including during the Civil War, billiard results
received wider coverage than war news. Players
were so renowned that cigarette cards were
issued featuring them. The BCA Hall of Fame
honors many players from this era, including
Jacob Schaefer, Sr. and his son, Jake Jr., Frank
Taberski, Alfredo DeOro, and Johnny Layton. The
first half of this century was the era of the
billiard personality. In 1906, Willie Hoppe, at
the age of 18, established the supremacy of
American players by beating Maurice Vignaux of
France at balkline. Balkline is a version of
carom billiards with lines drawn on the table to
form rectangles. When both object balls lie in
the same rectangle, the number of shots that can
be made is restricted. This makes the game much
harder because the player must cause one of the
balls to leave the rectangle, and hopefully
return. When balkline lost its popularity during
the 1930’s, Hoppe began a new career in
three-cushion billiards which he dominated until
he retired in 1952. Hoppe was a true American
legend - a boy of humble roots whose talent was
discovered early, a world champion as a
teenager, and a gentleman who held professional
titles for almost 50 years. One newspaper
reported that under his manipulation, the balls
moved “as if under a magic spell”, to many fans,
billiards meant Hoppe.
While the term “billiards”
refers to all the games played on a billiard
table, with or without pockets, some people take
billiards to mean carom games only and use pool
for pocket games. Carom games, particularly
balkline, dominated public attention until 1919,
when Ralph Greenleaf’s pool playing captured the
nation’s attention. For the next 20 years he
gave up the title on only a few occasions.
Through the 1930’s, both pool and billiards,
particularly three-cushion billiards, shared the
spotlight. In 1941 the Mosconi era began and
carom games declined in importance. Pool went to
war several times as a popular recreation for
the troops. Professional players toured military
posts giving exhibitions; some even worked in
the defense industry. But the game had more
trouble emerging from World War II than it had
getting into it. Returning soldiers were in a
mood to buy houses and build careers, and the
charm of an afternoon spent at the pool table
was a thing of the past. Room after room closed
quietly and by the end of the 1950’s it looked
as though the game might pass into oblivion.
Willie Mosconi, who won or successfully defended
the pocket billiard title 19 times, retired as
champion in 1956.
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Revival |
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Billiards was revived by two
events, one in 1961, the other in 1986. The
first was the release of the movie, “The
Hustler”, based on the novel by Walter Tevis.
The film depicted the dark life of a pool
hustler with Paul Newman in the title role. New
rooms opened all over the country and for the
remainder of the 60’s pool flourished, until
social concerns, the Vietnam War, and an
increase in outdoor activities led to a decline
in the game. In 1986, “The Color of Money”, the
sequel to “The Hustler” with Paul Newman in the
same role and Tom Cruise as an up-and-coming
professional, brought the excitement of pool to
a new generation. The opening of upscale rooms
catered to a new type of player, whose senses
may have been offended by the old cliché of
poolrooms.
While the game has had its
heroes since the early 1800’s, it has waged a
constant battle for respectability. In the
1920’s, the poolroom was an environment in which
men gathered to loiter, fight, bet and play, so
they were often the target of politicians eager
to show their ability to purge immorality from
the communities. Most rooms now bear no
resemblance to those of earlier times. The
atmosphere of many new rooms approaches that of
chic restaurants and night clubs. They offer
quality equipment, expert instruction, and the
chance for people to meet socially for a
friendly evening. These rooms have helped
contribute to the greatest interest in billiards
in over a century.
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Women in Billiards |
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Women have played billiards since
its beginning in the 15th century. Since the
late 1800s, there have been women who took the
game and their talents to new levels. May
Kaarlus turned heads with her trick shot
artistry at the turn of the century. Ruth
McGinnis could give most men a run for their
money and toured with the legendary Willie
Mosconi in the 30s. And in the early 70s, it was
grandmother Dorothy Wise, winning five U.S. Open
tournaments, who kept the women’s dream of
professional pool alive and well. It wasn’t
until 1976 and the formation of the Women’s
Professional Billiard Association (WPBA) that
women players officially organized. The WPBA
works with the BCA to further the careers of
great players from Jean Balukas, winner of seven
U.S. Opens, to Allison Fisher, winner of over 50
major titles since 1995. Today, women’s
billiards boasts unprecedented television
coverage and sponsor support in major events,
including the ESPN-televised BCA Open 9-Ball
Championships. In a sport once considered the
last bastion of male dominance, women are now at
the forefront of exposing pool to a wider
audience.
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