OneHandedBreak
No handed breaks too
How do you know they quote other sites verbatim if they didn't give a source?
*Scratches chin*
How Pool Evolved from Royalty to Bar Rooms
- Thread starter 504Billiards
- Start date
*Scratches chin*
OneHandedBreak
No handed breaks too
Oh and by the way I did think the video was quite good given the 2 minute length. Just trying to expand the dialogue!
Piecing together the game's history is no easy task, but hints pop up in the strangest places. For example, in Gustave Flaubert's literary classic Madame Bovary, published in 1856, the growing preference for tight equipment was noted.
In Part II, Chapter I, the following passage appears:
"Another billiard-table!" exclaimed the widow. "Since that one is coming to pieces, Madame Lefrancois. I tell you again you are doing yourself harm, much harm! And besides, players now want narrow pockets and heavy cues."
It seems that tight pockets were the growing preference in France in the 1850s. Go figure.
In Part II, Chapter I, the following passage appears:
"Another billiard-table!" exclaimed the widow. "Since that one is coming to pieces, Madame Lefrancois. I tell you again you are doing yourself harm, much harm! And besides, players now want narrow pockets and heavy cues."
It seems that tight pockets were the growing preference in France in the 1850s. Go figure.
billiards_watch
Well-known member
Google search allows you to figure out things like that. You do have to know how to use some slightly more advanced features.
OneHandedBreak
No handed breaks too
What advanced Google features are there these days? Putting things in quotes no longer works to find exact strings, and neither does using the minus sign (-) to show results without certain words.
Both of those seem to work for me, mostly.
bpeacock
Well-known member
I am reading Vanity Fair and references to billiards keep popping up so I asked
ChatGPT about it :
Fans of classic literature might enjoy how Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray captures the shady glamour of billiards in 19th-century British society. The novel doesn’t just treat billiards as a pastime—it subtly links it with gambling, hustling, and social maneuvering.
Take Rawdon Crawley, for example—a charming, roguish military man who's described as:
“good at billiards, a capital shot, and a master of all games of chance.”
He’s not just playing for fun—Rawdon is clearly someone who knows how to make money through games. Thackeray never spells it out, but it’s obvious: billiards was one of Rawdon’s ways to stay afloat financially, especially as he moved through officers’ messes and gentlemen’s clubs where stakes were always part of the game.
In that world, billiards wasn’t just sport—it was soft hustle. And unlike card games, which were often seen as more openly risky, billiards carried a veneer of skill and respectability. That made it the perfect cover for a gentleman gambler.
Thackeray is one of the finest writers that ever put a pen to paper. Vanity Fair is, of course, his masterpiece, but if you enjoy Thackeray, you will also greatly enjoy "The Luck of Barry Lyndon."
There's more to Barry Lyndon? 
Possibly Kubrick's most underrated film.
OneHandedBreak
No handed breaks too
From "Step inside the mysterious Masonic palace Quinta da Regaleira":
That seems to contradict the billiards room being added around 1900, unless the paintings were added after the billiards room was turned into the King's Room. A more likely scenario is that the paintings are much older than that, and that they adorned the room back when there was also billiards in play.
