1876
Slosson vs. Sexton. Foley’s Room, Chicago, September 17th.—Purse game, 5½ × 11 four-pocket table, counting in the old way. Slosson, 2000—33.33—356; Sexton, 1730—257. [The night before they had played the three-ball game on the same table. Slosson, 600—8.22—137; Sexton’s total, 278.]
Those games were not matches, and are not records. Not being matches, they furnished no line at all as to Old Billiards vs. New. This is the final four-ball chronicle as to professed experts of standing. The revival of contests on pocketless tables, tested as early as 1860, and abandoned outside of Philadelphia as too repressive of “safety,” or generalship, had brought the game into disesteem for spectacular uses. So small a table as a 5 × 10 for that way of going was almost a burlesque of competitive billiards in the hands even of approximate masters; and yet it remained for four-ball caroms to be played, although by an inferior class of experts in the remoter West, on a 4½ × 9 carom!