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Modern Billiards / A Complete Text-Book of the Game, Containing Plain and Practical Instructions How to Play and Acquire Skill at This Scientific Amusement cover

Modern Billiards / A Complete Text-Book of the Game, Containing Plain and Practical Instructions How to Play and Acquire Skill at This Scientific Amusement

Chapter 124: 1876.
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About This Book

A comprehensive manual treats billiards as a disciplined recreational skill, beginning with historical context and equipment and room considerations. It offers systematic, illustrated instruction in cue handling, shot-making, cushion play, and a wide range of game variants and scoring methods, including carom and pool forms. Practical chapters cover evolving techniques, table and cloth care, selection and use of cues, and strategies for counting and position play. Additional sections explain rules, tournament conduct, and competitive records, aiming to guide readers from basic shots to advanced, repeatable strokes through diagrams and methodical practice advice.

1874.

Louisiana Double Championship. Crescent Hall, New Orleans, April 6–30th.—Tournament at both four-ball and three-ball games. (For second, see Three-ball Caroms.) First prize, championship locket and $100; second, $50. Six games apiece. Average of tournament, about 13¼. Individual G. A.: H., 14.40; H. M., 20.61; C., 10.11; J. M., 14.31; J. F. M., 15.25; A., 10.31; Q., 10.65.

W. R. Av.
Albert Hoa 5 77 21.36
H. Miller 4 92 30.  
A. Coste 3 91 14.29
J. Miller 3 86 10.71
J. F. Maggioli 3 93 23.08
L. Abrams 2 96 21.43
Chas. Quaid 1 128 18.75

HOA VS. H. MILLER. Same hall, June 1st.—Match, stake $50. M., 500—20.83—155; H., 180—36.

H. MILLER VS. MAGGIOLI. Varieties Theatre, New Orleans, March 4, 1876. Miller, 500—33.33—91; Maggioli, 360—77.

1876.

Slosson vs. Sexton. Foley’s Room, Chicago, September 17th.—Purse game, 5½ × 11 four-pocket table, counting in the old way. Slosson, 2000—33.33—356; Sexton, 1730—257. [The night before they had played the three-ball game on the same table. Slosson, 600—8.22—137; Sexton’s total, 278.]

Those games were not matches, and are not records. Not being matches, they furnished no line at all as to Old Billiards vs. New. This is the final four-ball chronicle as to professed experts of standing. The revival of contests on pocketless tables, tested as early as 1860, and abandoned outside of Philadelphia as too repressive of “safety,” or generalship, had brought the game into disesteem for spectacular uses. So small a table as a 5 × 10 for that way of going was almost a burlesque of competitive billiards in the hands even of approximate masters; and yet it remained for four-ball caroms to be played, although by an inferior class of experts in the remoter West, on a 4½ × 9 carom!