English Billiards?

Blackball75

Blackball75

Blackball75
Silver Member
Anyone here in the US played English Billiards? :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_billiards

It's a hybrid carom billiards and pocket billiards game.

English billiards used to be the main billiards game in the UK, until it was superseded by snooker during last century.

Snooker is only little known here, so I'm guessing English Billiards is virtually unknown.

I played it a few times when I lived in the UK.

Played on a 12-foot snooker table, I reckon it requires at least as much skill as snooker.

It's the one game I can think of where scratching can be a good thing!
 
Great game. It certainly adds something to your snooker game. A good billiards player will give a good snooker player a run for his money, and even outmatch him at safety. But a snooker player will be outclassed at billiards.

Boro Nut
 
I saw a couple youtube videos of Walter Lindrum playing it. It looks like a very difficult game, but I would probably try it out if given the chance..
 
Blackball75 said:
Anyone here in the US played English Billiards?
...
Played on a 12-foot snooker table, I reckon it requires at least as much skill as snooker.

It's the one game I can think of where scratching can be a good thing!
Click to expand...

I think scratches count for points in Russian Billiards, too. Now there's a brutal game.

12' snooker tables are hard enough to find in the U.S. I haven't seen or heard of anyone playing English billiards here.

Joe Davis wrote about English billiards (and snooker, of course) in his autobiography, The Breaks Came My Way. It's a good read if you're interested in the competition to score high breaks in competition.
 
Blackball75 said:
Anyone here in the US played English Billiards? :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_billiards

It's a hybrid carom billiards and pocket billiards game.

English billiards used to be the main billiards game in the UK, until it was superseded by snooker during last century.

Snooker is only little known here, so I'm guessing English Billiards is virtually unknown.

I played it a few times when I lived in the UK.

Played on a 12-foot snooker table, I reckon it requires at least as much skill as snooker.

It's the one game I can think of where scratching can be a good thing!
Click to expand...
Mac (aka Cushioncrawler), who regurlarly posts to the CCB forum, is an accomplished Australian amateur player (ranks high in tournaments) if you want to learn more about the finer points of the game. He's a very amicable guy and won't be shy about offering up advice or general observations (u mae hav to ajust to hiz riting stile, butt don mis tak that fore lak of thortfulnes). He has a keen interest in both the historical aspects of billiards and well as the physics (though not much love for formal math). Don't bring up the subject of aramith balls.

Jim
 
I love this game, started playing it about five years ago. Very tough, very fun, and very fast. I like it much more than snooker because defense is not so easy.
 
Not enough balls

Great game, but you might not find it easy to find a playing partner.

The problem with English billiards is that the game cannot easily compete with snooker for the attention of potential new players. It has therefore all but died out.

I think that there are two reasons for this.

One is that because there are only 3 balls, the patterns that skilled players develop are quite repetititve. For a general audience, this does not make for good television.

The other problem is also a consequence of there being only 3 balls: Until you become reasonably adept at the game, you cannot control all the balls. As a consquence the quicky run into positions where it is very difficult to make a scoring shot. This makes the game appear very difficult to a novice player

So even if you can get to a snooker table, the chances are that none of the other guys around will have seen the game on TV and therefore got interested in it; and if they have, they probably will have tried the game but then given it up as being too difficult!

This is a shame since, it is a great game to play (although watching is probably for the true enthusiast only).

And it is not as difficult as is commonly thought. The rule of thumb used to be that an regular amateur who played both snooker and English billiards fairly frequently would have a high run in billiards about twice that of snooker. But if you tell that to someone who has tried the game a few times and then given up, they will not believe you. :embarrassed2:
 
Look up Walter Lindrum on youtube and the video there will show you how easy he made the game look.
 
spktur said:
Look up Walter Lindrum on youtube and the video there will show you how easy he made the game look.
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I think this guy made cue sports look so easy. In my favorite video of him he outlines everthing the balls are going to do until he scores 100 points in a row never making a mistake, and talking to the crowd the entire time. He is telling some jokes and the people are laughing.

I will agree the game is not the hardest of cue sports, but he still proved his skill to me by how easy he played it, and how much control he really had.

Lindrum is one of my favorite players to watch. It looked like he had it all figured out.
 
JamisonNeu said:
I think this guy made cue sports look so easy. In my favorite video of him he outlines everthing the balls are going to do until he scores 100 points in a row never making a mistake, and talking to the crowd the entire time. He is telling some jokes and the people are laughing.

I will agree the game is not the hardest of cue sports, but he still proved his skill to me by how easy he played it, and how much control he really had.

Lindrum is one of my favorite players to watch. It looked like he had it all figured out.
Click to expand...

He was unreal and had a tremendous championship record.
 
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