Since Louis XIV added it to the less innocent pleasures of his court, the pastime of billiards has had many offspring. Most impolite child is pool, which well-meaning persons have tried to dignify by calling it pocket billiards, publicizing it as a family game, rigging up modernistic equipment. Fortnight ago, when the world's championship opened on the Roof Garden of Manhattan's Hotel Pennsylvania, the players maneuvered stiffly in dinner jackets before a sparkling audience on tiers of blue & gold seats, longed vainly for spittoons and overhead counters. A preopening shot was more reminiscent of the squalling & brawling of the...
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