It all started 100 years ago this year

From March 25-April 6,1912 8 of the worlds best pocket billiard players met in Philadephia to play in the first ever World Championship Tournament using the modern form of the game called 14.1(leaving the cue ball and 15the object ball on the table and reracking the other 14). This revolutionized the game and lead directly into the Taberski-Greenleaf-Mosconi era of high run pocket billiards.

The winner of this first tournament was Edward Ralph a former barber turned pool player. He went undefeated at 7-0. It took 13 day with sunday off(blue laws) for the 8 players to complete the RR tournament. History does not tell us what the high run was but it probably was only 30 or so balls which was normal in those days. But before you scoff remember that they they played on 5x10's with larger ivory balls and smaller pockets.

So if you are "tipping a few" while enjoying the action tonight, tip one to Edward Ralph and the boys. I know I will. Enjoy the tournament.

John Bowers

How much bigger were those ivory balls

No one knows for sure but most experts seem to believe the balls were 1/8" to 3/16" larger. The pockets were smaller by about the same amount. However there are other considerations.
1-ivory balls react to changes in temperature and humidity much more quickly than composition balls or our modern plastic(not the right word) balls
2-as far as the pockets are concerned, look in the BCA rule book under equipment and you will find specifications on entrance angle, shelf size(how far into the pocket the slate can go) and drop point radius. All of these were factors affected how easy it was to make a given shot. You don't find much discussion of these factors or industry standards in the printed available to the average person through archivial research. Any of these factors could have made it easier or harder to make any given shot.
3-the quality of cues, cushions and cloth other considerations to weight.
4- Finally remember that only the year before (1911) they played the world championship one rack at a time. Now they had to consider the impact on pattern stradegies, amount of english used and speed on breakshots and what's my key ball. It was learn as you go straight pool. We today benefit from their experience through books and videos.

In the end I would defer to people like Mike Shamos on these questions. I just want to give credit to those who were the pioneers in this game we love. Remember most of these folks still didn't have inside pumbing yet. It truly was a different world.

John Bowers

they play to 150 points

sorry I forgot to answer this question in my first reply. They played 150 point games.