The Board of Green Cloth

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THE BOARD OF GREEN CLOTH.

The last number of Chamber’s Journal¹ has an interesting article on the noble game of billiards, which contains some new information and not a little pleasant gossip. The success of this game among all classes has been immense for the past ten years in this country, and when we consider the many and wealthy firms whose trade has become exclusively that of making billiard-tables, the enormous number of rooms where tables are let out for hire in every populous town, and, in particular, the large and influential class who make the practice of this game the amusement of their lives, it certainly seems to us that billiards has got to be important enough to have a word or two written about it to the general reader.

The Journal gives several anecdotes relative to the play of some first-rate performers. Of a celebrated English billiard player, Mr. Kentfield, the celebrated “Jonathan,” of Brighton, it says:

So continually are such as he accustomed to score, that himself and another excellent player finished thirty games of "twenty-four up" within the hour. In a match of less than tow hundred games, he beat his opponent eighty-five "love-games," those, that is, in which the adversary does not score a single hazard. With ordinarily good players, this gentleman is accustomed to take one pocket to his opponent's five; and, to convey a notion of his experience, he has played with one individual alone fifty thousand games of this kind; that is to say, estimating four games to be played within the hour—the one pocketgame being of course a very slow one—he has spent nearly one year and a half in knocking about ivory balls in company with a single fellow-creature. One celebrated match between a player still living (which one wonders at) and a French professor, lasted for two entire days and a night, during which the enthusiastic foreigner tasted nothing but liquids.

Of the strange effects produced in men of different dispositions by having money dependent upon their skill at this amusement there are many instances on record. The advantages of strong nerves over weak ones, in those who are members of the board of green cloth, are thus illustrated by Chambers:

Two gentlemen had for years frequented a certain subscription billiard-room without having taken or proposed a bet. One day, a spectator of the game then in progress offered to lay three hundred to two hundred on the result; and to the surprise of all present, one of the two gentlemen accepted the proposal. He won the three hundred pounds, and remained as cool as a cucumber.

On another match, his antagonist laid a wager of sixpence. During the progress of the game of 'twenty-four up' he evinved teh greatest anxiety; and upon the marker calling the score, 'tenty-three all," actually fainted away!

The game seems to be a great favorite in this country, to judge from the number of establishments one sees along our principal thoroughfares, and we believe that our American players cannot be surpassed in skill by those of any other nation. Some of our wealthy families, in imitation of the English, have a billiard room duly appropriated to the game, and as much a matter of course, as the library or dining-room. Viewed in this light, and apart from the evil influences which too often surround it, the “board of green cloth” may be looked upon as a graceful and beneficial exercise for our pale, sedentary, narrow-chested youth.

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