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    Willie Mosconi World's Champion 1941-58 on Pocket Billiards
    Willie Mosconi World's Champion 1941-58 on Pocket Billiards
    Willie Mosconi World's Champion 1941-58 on Pocket Billiards
    Ebook168 pages58 minutes

    Willie Mosconi World's Champion 1941-58 on Pocket Billiards

    By Willie Mosconi

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    This vintage book contains a comprehensive guide to playing billiards written by the 1941-58 billiards world champion, Willie Mosconi. This timeless volume includes comprehensive instructions and useful tips on every aspect of the game, and is highly recommended for anyone looking to improve their billiard skills. Complete with helpful photographs and step-by-step instructions, this volume would make for a great addition to collection of antiquarian sporting literature. The chapters of this book include: “The Game of Billiards”, “Fundamentals”, “The Bridge” “Stroke and Follow-Through”, “Cueing the Ball”, “Hitting the Object Ball”, “Combination and Kiss Shots”, “The Championship Game”, “How Much do you Know?”, “Speed of Stroke”, etcetera. Many antiquarian books such as this are increasingly hard to come by and expensive, and it is with this in mind that we are republishing this book now in an affordable, modern, high quality edition. It comes complete with a specially commissioned new introduction on billiards, snooker, and pool.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRead Books Ltd.
    Release dateJan 9, 2013
    ISBN9781447483533
    Willie Mosconi World's Champion 1941-58 on Pocket Billiards
    Author

    Willie Mosconi

    Willie Mosconi (1913–1993) was a professional pool player. Born and raised in Philadelphia, he won the World Straight Pool Championship an unmatched fifteen times between 1941 and 1957, and in 1954 ran 526 consecutive balls without missing, a world record that still stands. Nicknamed “Mr. Pocket Billiards,” Mosconi appeared on several television shows, including I’ve Got a Secret and What’s My Line?, and was an advisor for the 1961 film The Hustler starring Paul Newman. He has been inducted into the Billiard Congress of America Hall of Fame and the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame. In 1994, the Mosconi Cup international pool tournament was founded in his honor.

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      Willie Mosconi World's Champion 1941-58 on Pocket Billiards - Willie Mosconi

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      Preface

      This book on pocket billiards attempts to cover all phases of the game.

      Like a book on any sport, it must apologize to those with some knowledge of the game for the exhaustive discussion of fundamentals.

      The organization of the text was planned to take the uninitiated through such elementary steps as the selection of the cue, how to determine the cue’s balance, how to make a bridge, and the other basic requirements of good play.

      The beginner is urged to follow the instructions step by step as presented, since he must master the phases of play in their proper order to achieve rating as a good player.

      We believe, too, that there is much in this book that will be interesting and instructive to men and women who have been playing the game for years.

      To the latter, I suggest a study of the Table of Contents for subjects of particular interest, although it is not at all unfitting that even an experienced player review the fundamentals to make sure he has not developed a basic fault of which he is unaware.

      WILLIE MOSCONI

      1. The Game of Billiards

      JUST where and when the game of billiards originated no one knows.

      The best historical evidence is that the game originally was an indoor version of lawn bowling, which gained popularity first in England and later in France. This evidence dates the sport back to the fifteenth century.

      Shakespeare is responsible for the erroneous belief that the sport was played in the pre-Christian era, since in his Antony and Cleopatra, he has Cleopatra say to one of her attendants, Let us to billiards: come, Charmian. Billiard historians believe Shakespeare winked at the facts. A present-day Shakespeare having Cleopatra present at a baseball game would do no greater violence to fact than did the real Bard in connecting billiards with Cleopatra.

      The development of the game of billiards is as vaguely documented as is its origin, but we do know that the Spaniards brought the sport to the American continent in the sixteenth century; that a physician recommended it to Louis XIV of France (1638-1715) as a tonic exercise; that the game was played by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and the Marquis de Lafayette, and that Abraham Lincoln was an ardent cueman.

      Billiards became a most popular sport in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. Various types of games occupied the players. The first national championship match was played in 1859, the participants being Michael Phelan of New York and John Seereiter of Detroit. The match was played in Detroit with a $15,000 prize. Phelan won and declared himself the national champion.

      Championship events in billiards marked the annual sports calendar from 1859 on, but it was not until 1878 that championship play turned to games now popular in the United States. The first world’s pocket billiard championship contest was held in 1878, as was the first world’s three-cushion billiard tournament. Straight-rail billiards was also a popular carom game, but players became so skillful in this relatively simple game that it gave way in the 1880’s to the more difficult balkline games.

      With annual championship events, billiards became the national indoor sport after 1878. Meanwhile, the game gained in popularity in other countries. Those familiar with the universal popularity of the game are not surprised by the claim of an eminent sports authority that (prior to World War II) more people throughout the world play billiards than any other sport, with the exception of basketball.

      Down through the years since 1878, the championship games in billiards have been pockets, three-cushion, and balkline. On occasion title events have been held in cushion caroms and red ball. The balkline game, admittedly the most difficult of billiard pastimes, fell victim to the superior skill of Willie Hoppe, Jake Schaefer, Jr., and Welker Cochran in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s to such an extent that ultimately no other player could compete with them, with the result that world’s championship events in this phase of the billiard sport were abandoned after 1935.

      Pocket billiards and three-cushion billiards are the only games in which championship events are held today, but the game of snooker, a pocket game of English origin, has been gaining such popularity in the United States that championship events are being planned for this sport.

      The name pocket billiards is the official designation for the game more popularly known throughout the country as pool. The game is appropriately named officially, since the players definitely must have a knowledge of billiards to attain a high degree of skill. In pocket billiards, the player, in effect, plays a billiard from an object ball (which he pockets) to a spot on the table, thus getting in good position for his next shot.

      Pocket billiards and three-cushion billiards are the billiard games in the United States. While carom billiard games enjoy popularity in metropolitan centers, for the most part, pocket billiards is played in every nook and corner of the country. It would be safe to say that more than 90 per cent of the billiard players in the United States are exponents of the pocket billiard games.*

      The game of pocket billiards appeals to men, women, and youngsters of all ages. While it is offered to the general public chiefly in commercial billiard rooms and bowling establishments, nevertheless it always has been a top-ranking sport in church recreation rooms, on Y.M.C.A. programs, among youngsters in boys’ clubs, and in adult clubs of various types.

      During the past 25 years, college men and women have been playing billiards in intramural and intercollegiate competition. Until the war interfered, national championships were held for the collegians. After a few years’ lapse, the college championships were resumed in the spring of 1947. Four hundred and fifty-seven colleges have tables.

      During the war officials of the Boys’ Clubs of America accepted pocket billiards as a fine competitive sport for the youngsters under their supervision and conducted national tournaments, through a system of keyshots devised by Charles C. Peterson. Club champions of the Boys’ Clubs met in national championship play-offs in the spring of 1946 and in each of the following years through 1958.

      The war gave billiards great impetus, as hundreds of thousands of enlisted men and women played the game at military and naval training bases. Practically every company dayroom on the army posts had a pocket billiard table for the enjoyment of the soldiers. Tables were also popular recreation facilities in service clubs and in officers’ clubs.

      The Billiard Congress of America increased the enjoyment of billiards by servicemen and women, sending stars like Peterson, Hoppe, Erwin Rudolph, and Andrew Ponzi into the training camps to teach the sport and demonstrate their cue magic. [EDITOR’S NOTE: Willie Mosconi, a GI during the war, gave exhibitions at posts where he was stationed.]

      In the postwar world, the outlook for billiards is better than ever, in the opinion of competent observers. Accepting this fact, the Billiard Congress of America has inaugurated a program of sectional college tournaments, which will qualify players for the national collegiate championships.

      The sectional tournaments are bound to feed the fire of billiard competition throughout the country—and bring forth new players of great skill.

      And last, but certainly not least, the Brunswick Corp., unquestionably the world’s foremost manufacturers of billiard facilities, has opened the door for women to find their way into the billiard sport. For the past few years, Brunswick has been instrumental in planning and outfitting billiard rooms with bowling establishments. These rooms of ultra-modern design offer the billiard sport to all members of the family in a setting which billiards has long deserved. Brunswick billiard rooms in bowling establishments are finding the endorsement of churches, civic officials, and welfare groups.

      Within a few

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