Bar Billiards is a form of billiards which is often thought to be based on the traditional game of bagatelle. It actually developed from the earlier French/Belgian game billard Russe, with supposedly Russian origins.
Bar billiards in its current form started in the UK in the 1930s when an Englishman David Gill saw Billard Russe being played in Belgium and persuaded the Jelkes company of Holloway Road in London to make a similar table. It is a traditional game played in leagues in Sussex, Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Surrey, Kent, Cambridgeshire, Hampshire, Norfolk and Northamptonshire. These counties comprise the All England Bar Billiards Association. There are also leagues in Guernsey and Jersey. Tables were also made by Sams, Riley, Burroughs & Watts and Clare. The standard "league" tables have a playing surface approximately 32 inches wide. Sams also made a narrower version with a 28 inch width playing surface.
Read more about Bar Billiards: The Game, Bar Billiards World Championship
Famous quotes containing the words bar and/or billiards:
“The bar is the male kingdom. For centuries it was the bastion of male privilege, the gathering place for men away from their women, a place where men could go to freely indulge in The Bull Session ... the release of the guilty anxiety of the oppressor class.”
—Shulamith Firestone (b. 1945)
“So wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for weariness from the peculiar state of his disposition; and so frivolous is he that, though full of a thousand causes for weariness, the least thing, such as playing billiards or hitting a ball, is sufficient to amuse him.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)