English billiards needed rules to stop champions scoring forever
English billiards uses just three balls, and the best players could keep a break going almost indefinitely. So the rules cap repetition: a sixteenth consecutive hazard or a seventy-sixth consecutive cannon counts as a foul. One Australian, Walter Lindrum, stayed world professional champion from 1933 until he retired in 1950.
The game is a merger of three older pastimes: the winning game, in which you pocketed your opponent's ball; the losing game, in which you scored by sending your own ball into a pocket off another; and carom billiards from continental Europe, which contributed a red ball and the cannon, striking both other balls in one shot. French tables were fashionable in English coffee houses, of which London alone had more than two thousand in the early 18th century. By about 1800 the three had fused into English billiards, and the skill involved helped push out the old mace in favour of the cue. Even the custom of lagging for first shot descends from the winning game.
Each player has a cue ball, one white and one yellow, and shares the red, on a table the same size as a snooker table. Potting the red or going in-off it earns three points; doing either with the opponent's ball earns two, as does a cannon. Because these can combine, a single stroke can yield up to ten points.
Titles long changed hands by challenge, with stakes held by a third party. Jonathan Kentfield, the first champion, held on from 1820 until 1849, when he lost it after refusing John Roberts Sr.'s challenge, and challenges decided every champion until the first organised professional tournament in 1870. The Billiards Association, formed in 1885, was the first governing body, and a Women's Billiard Association followed in 1931, co-founded by the former suffragette Teresa Billington-Greig.
The game barely registered in America until Melbourne Inman played Willie Hoppe there in 1913. In Britain snooker and eight-ball pool later overshadowed it, though snooker players still use billiards to practise cue-ball control.
Source: English billiards
