Recently, Diane and I stopped by a billiards parlor for a few games of pocket pool. Willaby's is a clean well managed room with a dozen or more tables in Swansea on Rt. 6, a 40 minute ride from Taunton. We're pretty rusty players, but I was thinking how much this differs from Schwein's, where I learned to play. The tables and the room are quite different from where I miss-spent too many hours in my late high school years.
Schwein's was a standard mainstreet store-front, big glass windows and an inset door. In one of the window spaces was a barber chair, manned by one of the brothers, keeping eyes with his customers on passing life on Main Street. The rest of the space was the pool hall run by his brother.
The room had a bare wood floor with chairs and benches lined up against the walls, and a drink rail about head height around the room. Several cue racks were on the walls. A small bar in back - Kansas was "3.2 at 18" at the time.
There were two rows of tables - a billiards table, a pocket pool table, and 6 snooker tables with bright lights above. Wires ran across the room about 8 feet above the floor between tables. They were strung with wood beads for scoring, that you moved with a cue stick.
One paid by the game or rack. I think it was 10 cents for pocket pool and 20 for snooker. There was a "rack man" who hung out in the bar area and collected the money and re-racked the balls for each game. Or you could pay by the hour to practice if tables were open.
Most people today only know pocket pool, with striped and solid numbered balls. It is a modest sized table, and the two-ball-wide pocket openings have angled bumpers so you can bank a ball in. We routinely referred to the game as "slop." Mostly that table was played by beginners and people waiting for a snooker table to open up - or for a haircut.
Many people have never seen a true billiards table except on television. It is larger by a foot or so each way than a pocket pool table and it has no pockets. The game is played by two players with one red and two white balls. Each player owns a white ball (one has a red dot) and scores by touching the other two balls with his, usually requiring 3 cushion-bounces between the touches. It is not a high-scoring or speedy game and requires good skills.
Snooker was the preferred game by far. A large table, same size as billiards, but with smaller balls than pocket pool and only ball-and-half-wide pockets that have rounded bumpers. The game starts with a triangle of red balls and numbered balls spotted around the table. There is an arc limiting the placement of the breaking ball. You sink a red ball, then as high a numbered ball as you can. The numbered ball returns to table until the reds are gone, then numbered balls go down in sequence. Scoring is one point for a red ball and face value for a numbered ball. You maintain count by moving the beads strung above with your cue stick.
In terms of difficulty, snooker requires much more precision than pocket pool. It's not a very good game for taking out frustrations. Three-cushion billiards particularly is really quite difficult and does not reward frustration well. Compared to pocket pool, billiards is like chess to checkers. Snooker is a happy middle ground.
My nostalgia for this is mixed. It's cool to have had that experience, but there's little motivation to be good at it today. Three-cushion billiards and snooker are more demanding than my interest could sustain. In fact, I was pretty terrible at pocket pool today. It rewards practice. Diane enjoys the play, so we'll probably hit Willaby's again.
Arthur Dirks. August 13, 2017
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