Mark Twain

DynoDan

DynoDan

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PBS ‘Museum’ tv episode touring his home billiard room depicts a 9’ pocket table, but with a set of carom balls. I may be wrong, but I thought I remembered a contemporary photo of the same room with him playing on a pocketless carom table (?). The rooms inlaid decorations also depicts cues & only carom/3-ball sets. Was there a game popular then using carom balls on a pool table? Can anyone shed some light? The program didn’t reveal any details re: that current table.
 
Great question. The photos of him playing, taken nearish the end of his life, all show him playing on a pocket billiard table with a 3ball carom set. He was old enough that he would have played 4ball on a pocket table (in which you make points by pocketing balls and caroms/billiards). But the photos show 3 balls and not 4, even in those where he is playing with a young girl.
 
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LowRight said:
Cowboy maybe?
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The famous picture has billiard balls. In Cowboy you use pool balls. I remember playing it years ago in the NC. They had a rule you had to land on the winning score exactly. I somehow remember going over and having to run another 99 points. Before I got there I was hearing about this guy running hundreds. I thought he was playing straight pool. I thought there is no way I can beat this guy. Turns out he was playing Cowboy pool.

Once I learned their rules, I beat the hell out of him. This was just outside Camp Lejeune. My brother in law was a DI there He wanted to sneak me there to beat a bunch of marines. I was not going to do that. My brother in law not long after that went to Viet Nam, (by choice, he didn't have to go). He was wounded 19 days later and died shortly after that. That pool playing trip and the time we spent togeather was the last time I saw him. I am sorry to tell the story but Cowboy pool brought back the memory. That was 56 years ago, I like the story.
 
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Maybe he happened to have a pocket table but liked to play 3C on it. I've done that a few times.
 
hang-the-9 said:
Maybe he happened to have a pocket table but liked to play 3C on it. I've done that a few times.
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I sold them on eBay but I used to have a vintage set of irons that you would put into the corner and side pockets in order to turn it into a billiard table.
 
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From some minor Googling on the topic, it appears he liked to invent his own games, so that could explain our confusion. He wrote fondly of "billiards" and of seeing Hoppe and Schaeffer play in the last decade of his life when the term "pool" was in common use.
 
Poolhall60561 said:
Is there a game called English billiards that uses carom balls on a pocket table ?
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Yes, it was what was called billiards back in the date in England, and is now called English Billiards. The pocket table is what we now call a snooker table - 6x12 with rounded pockets. British Army officers in India developed snooker using the English Billiards table in the late 1800s. English Billiards is still played in some places. Scoring is done via canons and potting, with rules in effect limiting how many points of one type can be scored consecutively.

Rules

Example of play

The game with the 5 little plastic pins is called 5 pin billiards and I think it is mostly played in Italy. It is played on a standard 5x10 carom table. When I went to the 3C World Championship in Bordeaux in 2016 I bought a set of pins and fooled around with it a little but couldn't generate much interest from the other guys I played 3C with. If I'm not mistaken the 3C great Marco Zanetti has been a world champion at 5 pins.

5 pin billiards
 
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"The game of billiards has destroyed my naturally sweet disposition.

Once, when I was an underpaid reporter in Virginia City, whenever I wished to play billiards I went out to look for an easy mark. One day a stranger came to town and opened a billiard parlor. I looked him over casually. When he proposed a game, I answered, “All right.”

“Just knock the balls around a little so that I can get your gait,” he said; and when I had done so, he remarked: “I will be perfectly fair with you. I’ll play you left-handed.” I felt hurt, for he was cross-eyed, freckled, and had red hair, and I determined to teach him a lesson. He won first shot, ran out, took my half-dollar, and all I got was the opportunity to chalk my cue.

“If you can play like that with your left hand,” I said, “I’d like to see you play with your right.”

“I can’t,” he said. “I’m left-handed.” "(Source: PBS)

Billiards ruins my naturally sweet disposition at times too.
Here is another quote I can relate to: “The billiard table is better than the doctor.”― Mark Twain
 
KissedOut said:
Yes, it was what was called billiards back in the date in England, and is now called English Billiards. The pocket table is what we now call a snooker table - 6x12 with rounded pockets. British Army officers in India developed snooker using the English Billiards table in the late 1800s. English Billiards is still played in some places. Scoring is done via canons and potting, with rules in effect limiting how many points of one type can be scored consecutively.

Rules

Example of play

The game with the 5 little plastic pins is called 5 pin billiards and I think it is mostly played in Italy. It is played on a standard 5x10 carom table. When I went to the 3C World Championship in Bordeaux in 2016 I bought a set of pins and fooled around with it a little but couldn't generate much interest from the other guys I played 3C with. If I'm not mistaken the 3C great Marco Zanetti has been a world champion at 5 pins.

5 pin billiards
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In the poolroom where I grew up, the old men played a game using little wooden bowling pins on a 10’ carom table. They called it ‘cribbage‘.
 
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More ‘Twain’ trivia from the museum program: His writing table in the billiard room had him seated facing into the corner, so he couldn’t be distracted by the pool table (since he would rather be playing).
Don’t know how many countless times I went down through my basement shop/poolroom on some other project errand, forgot it, and ended up playing instead!
 
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I did some more searching to see if the photos above (all taken at the same time) perhaps just showed people screwing around. But this later photo from 1933, years after Twain's death, also shows carom balls sitting on the pocket table.

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I emailed the Mark Twain House museum to see if they have an answer. They have the table currently made up like this photo with the carom balls.

Perhaps Twain liked to play English Billiards on an American pool table or couldn't find a table with rounded pockets.
 
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