Bar Billiards

[Octavious]

Any fans out there?

The local pub has just acquired a table and it looks rather fun, but I've not a scooby about tactics.

[Valis2501]

Paging u/OB_Gyn_Kenobi

[Claesar]

Is this the game where you have to hit the other two balls with your one, or the gamr where you need to pocket your balls before the opponent finishes theirs?

[Octavious]

Is this the game where you have to hit the other two balls with your one, or the gamr where you need to pocket your balls before the opponent finishes theirs?

The first one is regular billiards. No idea what the 2nd one is .

No, bar billiards is the one that looks a bit like a pool table but with golf holes instead of pockets, and you have to cannon balls into the holes whilst avoiding knocking over the mushrooms.

[New England Fire Squad]

Any fans out there?

The local pub has just acquired a table and it looks rather fun, but I've not a scooby about tactics.

I was the champ at my college. The key, if I recall correctly, is to get incredibly drunk. Always played terribly otherwise.

[Octavious]

Well, yes... Being drunk goes without saying. It's impossible to achieve a decent aerial shot when sober, but after a few and a few more you can dance the balls across the mushroom tops.

[damo666]

The clever thing about bar billiards is all shots ar from one end of the table so the other end can abutt a wall thus a lot less space than a pool table hence its use in pubs particularly smaller venues (is it peculiar to England?)

From memory it's all about angles, weight, luck and pint intake.

[Octavious]

I've never seen it anywhere other than England, but I've very rarely seen it in England either. Darts are common as muck (mostly standard, but you see several variants across the country) as are the fruities and quiz machines. Pool is pretty common (English pool, of course. You only ever see American pool in sports bars). After that I'd say skittles is still a big thing in the country. Bar billiards is definitely at the niche end of the spectrum, like those pubs with rifle ranges and shove halfpenny leagues.

[MajorMitchell]

My understanding of these table, balls & cues capers are that Snooker is played with , I think fifteen balls & white cue ball. Several red balls set up in triangular formation, Black ball as rear garden. Pink ball in front of red ball formation with three balls, line abreast in lead position, brown, yellow and green. Played on a large rectangular table with six pockets my Ladies and Gentlemen.

Billiards was a more esoteric game played with three balls on tables if various sizes and shapes without pockets. Various forms of billiards were popular in establishments that catered for the entertainment desires of gold miners in northern America and Australia that were derivativations of the original game from British Gentlemen's Clubs.
Popular because often played on smaller tables that for example might be part rectangular with three sides with two 90° internal corners and a curved outward arched fourth side.
Played by Scallywags and Ladies who may have reputations that I will euphemistically describe as happiness consultants dispensing erotic pleasures therapies with mercenary zeal.

Eight ball is a game played by common persons in licensed premises or in homes. Most modern man caves inhabited by more affluent common persons will have one of these tables. Rectangular with six pockets but of reduced size in comparison to a proper Christian sized Snooker table, for example six feet long by three(?) feet wide.

Gosh, Snooker, oh the memories from halcyon days of younger years, when my Adorable Fire Breathing Mem Sahib Her Serene Imperiousness Indoors clad in diaphanous garments would mount the Snooker table to make a tricky shot, and being a gentleman i would avert my gaze from her delicate foot required to maintain contact with the floor and instead give respectful scrutiny to alternate delights displayed by Her Serene Loving Martial Imperiousness. There were times I almost naturally stood to attention in salute observing the permutations of positions as Her Serene Imperiousness readied herself for the shot.

[Octavious]

Snooker is, of course, the supreme game of skill for those with plenty of space. Traditional billiards, I believe, is played on a snooker table but I've never understood the fascination with the game. English pool is played on a table smaller than American pool, and with yellow and red colours rather than solid and stripes. I have no idea which route Australia went down in pool, but hopefully the sensible one. I've heard tell of a 9 ball variation with a diamond rather than a triangle, but what would compel people to play such a game I have no idea.

I'm properly interested in the variations of billiards that developed in Australia. Do any of them have mushrooms?

[MajorMitchell]

The golden age of billiards in Australia was in the early gold rush periods and.around the Goldfields eg Bendigo in Victoria, Bathurst in NSW Kalgoorlie WA late nineteenth century. The gold miners in Victoria in late 29th century were that wealthy that they consumed imported French Champaign and caviar from Russia in the last decades of sailing ships, so that's caviar packed in ice during shipment to Melbourne then moved to Bendigo.
I think the world champion was an Australian around the turn of the centuries. Abandoned in the Great War and a lingering death post WW.
Snooker is popular, that's hung on.
I was employed for a few years in Melbourne for a global blue chip computer corporation and I found a superb Snooker based Club about 2km from their Head Offices in Melbourne. So my trusty immediate superior, JB, us being number one & two on the technical side and reporting to group manager used it as our base for pre and post Head Office visits and as our general meeting place instead of Head Office.
It was a superb Club. Licensed with good kitchen/dining, no pokies. A dozen full sized Snooker tables, half a dozen smaller 8ft by 4ft(?) Eight ball.tables, brilliant coffee and tea services.
JB was an excellent chap, former Royal Navy Navigation Officer, made Lt Commander, then went to IBM in UK for a decade or so. Went through two marriages in UK. Moved to Australia with third wife and new babies and joined ******** who had headhunted me from ****""****. Just the sort of chap we like emigrating to Sunny Australia, a hard working optimistic chap with family.

[MajorMitchell]

Trust me, JB was a most industrious chap and a dab hand at filling out a monthly overtime form legitimately to maximise his income. He had two families back in UK to support in properties to maintain plus the new family and residence in Melbourne to fund. He and I were a formidable team, and cracked one rather devious internal fraud for one of the big four Australian banks thanks to my abilities of those days at decoding hardware logs coded in beautiful Hex~decimal digits out to binary, the easy bit, then analysing the data and finding the evidence that ruled out a number of possible explanations and found the methods used & then culprits. Most satisfying.