Everything about Straight Rail totally explained
Balkline is the overarching title of a large array of
carom billiards games generally played on a cloth-covered, 5 foot × 10 foot, pocketless table with two
cue balls and a third red-colored ball, that's divided into marked regions called
balk spaces. Such balk spaces define areas of the in which a player may only score up to a threshold number of points while the are within that region.
The balkline games developed to make the game,
straight rail, more difficult and less tedious for spectators to view in light of extraordinary skill developments which allowed top players to score a seemingly
endless series of points with the balls barely moving in a confined area of the table playing area. Straight rail, unlike the balkline games, had no balk space restrictions, although one was later added. The object of the game is simple: one point, called a "count", is scored each time a player's cue ball makes contact with both object balls (the second cue ball and the third ball) on a single . A win is achieved by reaching an agreed upon number of counts.
Carom billiards players of the modern era may find it astounding that balkline ever became necessary given the considerable difficulty of straight rail. Nevertheless, according to Mike Shamos,
curator of the U.S. Billiard Archive, "the skill of dedicated players [ofstraight rail] was so great that they could essentially score at will." The story of straight rail and of the balkline games are thoroughly intertwined and encompass a long and rich history, characterized by an astounding series of back and forth developments, akin to a billiards
evolutionary arms race, where new rules would be implemented to make the game more difficult and to decrease high runs to keep spectators interested, countered by new shot inventions and skills interdicting each new rule.
The rise and "fall" of straight rail
Straight rail from which the balkline games derive, sometimes called
carom billiards,
straight billiards, the
three-ball game, the
carambole game, and the
free game in
Europe, is thought to date to the 1700s, although no exact time of origin is known. It was known as
French caroms,
French billiards, or the
French Game in early times, taking those bygone names from the French who popularized it. The
derivation of the name
straight rail isn't clear. An early mention appears in the
March 23,
1881 edition of the
New York Times
At straight rail's inception there was no restriction on the manner of scoring, such as a number of cushions that must be contacted on a shot, as in the game of
three cushion billiards, nor a requirement that the balls leave a region of the table, as in the balkline games.
Straight rail became progressively more popular and skill in the game increased commensurately. and the champion of the first world title straight rail tournament in 1873,
averaged 12 points over the course of the competition and posted a high run of 113. Although unimpressive compared with later records (in 1931 legendary player
Charlie Peterson achieved an astounding
10,232 high run count), the many-fold increase in scoring average and high run as compared with the 1855 contest was a result of refinement of gather shots and, most importantly, the development of a variety of "nurse" techniques (also called nursery cannons in the UK).
A gather shot refers to a shot in which the intent is to bring the cue ball and object balls together, ideally near a rail. A nurse describes fine, close-quarters manipulation of object balls once gathered near a rail, which results in both balls being touched by the cue ball, but with all three balls, or that result in a position that can be duplicated over and over.
At the U.S. straight rail professional tournament held in 1879,
Jacob Schaefer, Sr. scored 690 points in a single at the table (with the prohibition against crotching in place). With the balls barely moving and repetitively hit, there was little for the fans to watch. Schaefer was quickly "hailed as 'the wizard'… Billiards officials, recognizing that Schaefer was a peerless performer in "nursing," wrote an 8-inch balkline into the rules…"
This marked the demise of professional straight rail in the U.S., which only had a six year run from 1873 to 1879. Meanwhile, straight rail professional play continued in Europe, with high run counts consistently climbing.
Frenchman Maurice Vignaux posted a 1,531 count in Paris in 1880, while
American George Spears had a high run of 5,041 in 1890. Later runs of over 10,000, in addition to the one previously noted, have been accurately reported. The game employed diagonal lines — balklines — at the table's corners to regions where counts were restricted, thus "cutting off four triangular spaces in the four corners, [taking] away 28 inches of the 'nursing' surface of the end rails and 56 inches on the long rails."
Reporting on the first tournament at which the champion's game was featured in 1879, sponsored by
H. W. Collender, the New York Times wrote: "taken as a test, the games thus far played indicate that the new game has taken well with the public, for whose amusement it was chiefly designed. That the rules binding it have effected a great improvement on the ordinary game of French caroms there can be no doubt."
Despite its divergence from straight rail, the champion's game simply expanded the dimensions of the balk space defined under the existing crotch prohibition. The aim of stopping the rail nurse wasn't successful. Jacob Schaefer, Sr. the same player whose 690 count was in large part responsible for the institution of new rules, in short order developed a technique allowing him and other players to reverse the direction of the rail nurse. The balls could thus be endlessly nursed down the rail, reversed in orientation, and nursed the opposite direction without ever even entering the expanded balk space.
Balklines didn't stop the rail nurse but they did restrict its use. Soon a new type of nurse was developed which exploited a loophole in balkline rules: so long as both object balls straddled a balkline, there was no restriction on counts, as each ball lay in a separate balk space. The new technique, deemed the
anchor nurse, again increased runs greatly. The anchor nurse is a stationary shot in which both object balls, falling on either side of a balkline, are hit repeatedly without moving—they are "anchored" in place. Once again a new rule was necessary to combat this new skill development; thus arose the
Parker's box in 1894.
True to form, the next skill development response was the
chuck nurse, known as a
rocking cannon in the
United Kingdom. With one ball frozen to the cushion in the Parker's box, but the second object ball away from the rail just outside the borders of the Parker's box, the cue ball is gently rebounded off the ball not moving it, but with just enough speed to meet the other object ball which rocks in place, but doesn't change position. In 1912, playing 18.2 balkline,
William A. Spinks ran 1,010 continuous points using the chuck nurse and broke off his run without ever missing.
The solution ultimately reached, and the change that brought the general rules of balkline into configuration with what is played today, was the establishment of
anchor spaces. The anchor space is simply a doubling of the Parker's box to 7 inches distant from the rail and 14 inches
parallel to the rail; simple, but placing the chuck nurse out of reach. The new restriction was instituted for a 1914 tournament, the first in 14.1 balkline, specifically to curtail the chuck nurse.
Further Information
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