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Billiards

By billiards I mean that family of carom games played on tables without pockets, which are more common than pool tables in most non-English-speaking countries. I think I would be better suited temperamentally to the quieter confines of a paneled clubroom or a stately mansion, where liveried retainers would fetch my tea. My feelings, in fact, for the game are precisely those expressed by H. W Collender in Modern Billiards more than a hundred years ago:

The game of billiards has reached such a high degree of popularity that the billiard table has become a requisite in every well-furnished modern household, and to play a fine game is regarded as one of the accomplishments of every well-educated gentleman. To reach the proficiency of the great experts is not, of course, easily attainable, but to become a good amateur player is not an extravagant ambition. It is within the province of everyone gifted with ordinary natural abilities and aided by a good textbook, which will guide him step by step to master the strokes usually presenting themselves in a game, to reach a degree of skill which will entitle him to rank as an accomplished player. The present treatise, besides answering such a purpose, will be found to be the most perfect ever offered to the public.

Beautiful, subtle, spectacular, challenging, exhilarating, exasperating, cruel, rewarding, elegant, and endlessly intriguing game of three-cushion billiards, which is played on a table without pockets. There is a lot to like about it. You don't have to stop every few minutes to rack balls. You don't have to worry about the other player running the game out without giving you a chance to shoot. Unlike pool and snooker, you can play three-cushion billiards all over Scandinavia, the low countries, western, eastern, and southern Europe, North Africa, South and Central America, Japan, and Indonesia. In some cities in the United States, it's hard to find a "billiard" room that has billiard (pocketless) tables.

The game requires of its practitioners a significant amount of creative ability, for the shots have to be imagined before they can be made. In every game, positions arise that have never been seen before by man or beast. It is a game of both delicacy and power; on some shots the cueball must travel only a few inches, on others more than forty feet. Like chess it is a game of infinite richness, with each move combining offense and defense. It takes years to learn to play expertly, but, also like chess, it can be enjoyed at any level.

When you make a point in three-cushion billiards, you know you've done something. Five points in a row fills a beginner with pride. National-class players feel good for a week if they manage a run of ten. Hardly more than a half-dozen men in the long history of human striving have run more than twenty.

Propelled by an expert, a billiard ball teaches physics and geometry as it traces patterns on the table, speeding up, slowing down, and changing directions in surprising ways; it takes on uncanny properties, not the least of which is an apparent knowledge of what it is supposed to do and where it is supposed to go. There is a quality of suspended animation about the game that I find most absorbing. Most pool shots are made or missed within the blink of an eye, while in billiards the outcome is often in doubt for as long as seven or eight seconds.

In pool, pinpoint accuracy is often required in hitting the object ball. In billiards it is more a matter of blending the hit with the other variables of speed, stroke, and spin, and there is plenty of disagreement on some shots on what blend is best. The mix of variables, even what shot to try when a choice is presented, is more often a matter of the player's personality than his knowledge of the game or his powers of analysis. Is he reckless or chicken, a craftsman or a show-off? Whole schools of thought have arisen on how the game should be played. Americans are noted for stressing defense, Latin Americans offense. The Japanese are trying to reduce guesswork by refining the so-called diamond systems, while the Europeans are strong on position play.

There is disagreement on details, yes, but there is a large body of tested wisdom the student can acquire. A few things were revealed by Willie Hoppe in his 1941 Billiards As It Should Be Played, but the bulk of the iceberg remained submerged in a pool of oral lore guarded by initiates. Hoppe's book contains only fifty tiny diagrams on three-cushion, half of which are devoted to an out-of-focus discussion of the diamond system, which he didn't use in his own play.

Considering that the game is more than a century old (billiards in general goes back perhaps five hundred years, but the first three-cushion tournament was held in St. Louis in 1878) and that it is a popular pastime in much of the civilized world, it is surprising how little was published on technique. There was a near conspiracy of silence among some of the early great players, who carried secrets with them to the grave. Even today, little is available on such vital topics as safeties, kisses, position play, and how the diamond system really works. Scores of shots and stratagems have never before been diagrammed, written about, or even named in any language.

My aim in preparing a comprehensive guide to three-cushion billiards is to take the mystery out of it, to show that it is not as hopelessly abstract as outsiders sometimes think, to provide a system of nomenclature, to improve the play of those who already know the game and would like to know it better, and to make its pleasures available to pool players who don't have an expert handy whose brains they can pick (or who have one handy they can't stand). What follows is designed to shorten and simplify the process of teaching as well as learning the game. Readers who want to see the diagrammed shots demonstrated or who want to see the game played at the top level should contact a friendly local tournament player. For the name of the one nearest you, call the pool emporiums in your area and ask if they have billiard tables (some desk people don't know the difference between pool and billiard tables), or the United States Billiard Association. A good teacher, one who "sees" the shots and knows how to play them, is essential in learning a game that involves so many layers. Once you get the hang of it, though, it's easier than it looks.

In 1992 Accu-Stats Video Productions began videotaping the annual international three-cushion tournaments hosted by 1993 world champion Sang Chun Lee at his S. L. Billiards in New York. Since then, Accu-Stats has built up a remarkable library of matches between the world's greatest players, taped close-up with commentary by (ahem!) yours truly. The tapes are a tremendous resource for learning the game that was unavailable to earlier generations of students. Even nonplayers, not to mention pool players, become mesmerized watching the great artists like Torbjorn Blomdahl of Sweden, the legendary Raymond Ceulemans of Belgium, Dick Jaspers of The Netherlands, Semih Sayginer of Turkey, and our own Sang Lee.

The beauty and elegance of one of the world's most visual and dramatic games has so far gone undetected by American television producers. However, beach volleyball, synchronized swimming, Wrestlemania, rhythmic gymnastics, bowling, and even fishing will be covered as usual.

Three-cushion Rules

Three-cushion billiards is played on a pocketless table with two white balls and a red ball. One of the white balls, marked by a dot and called the black ball, is used by one player throughout the game as his cueball; the other player uses the other white ball as his cueball. A white-yellow-and-red ball combination is also popular.

To score a point, the cueball must hit three or more cushions and one of the object balls, in any sequence, before it hits the other object ball. Phrased another way: The cueball must hit both object balls, but before it gets to the second one it must hit three or more cushions. It is not necessary to hit three different cushions. The first player to make an agreed-upon number of points wins. Friendly games are usually set at twenty-five, tournament games continue to thirty-five, forty, fifty, or sixty.

The international rules that now prevail around the world differ slightly from those Americans learned as children. Under international rules, when the cueball is frozen to a ball only the two balls are respotted ... unless the player chooses to shoot away from the frozen ball. When respotting, the shooter's cueball goes on the head spot, the opponent's cueball goes on the center spot, and the red ball goes on the foot spot. If the third ball (the one not frozen to the cueball) interferes with the spotting of one of the frozen balls, the ball being spotted goes on the spot assigned to the interfering ball. Under old American rules, the player confronted with a frozen cueball has the option of taking the opening break shot.

Deliberate safeties are banned under the new rules-you must always take a shot that has at least some chance of scoring, and points are not deducted from anybody's score for any reason. Old American rules permitted one deliberate safety, after which the player had to make an effort to score or risk losing a point. Under international rules, a foul ends the shooter's inning, and he loses nothing but his aplomb. Old rules OK'd knocking an object ball off the table-it was respotted and the inning continued if a point was scored. Now the inning ends when any ball leaves the table. Be sure to find out what local practice is before engaging in a contest for a significant wager.

Robert Byrne. Byrne's New Standard Book of Pool and Billiards Harcourt. 7/1/1998.

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