Tom Reece (12 August 187316 October 1953) was an English professional player of English billiards. He was six times runner-up in the professional billiards championship, now regarded as the world championship, losing three times to Melbourne Inman in finals from 1912 to 1914, and three times to Tom Newman in the 1921, 1924 and 1925 finals. He made the unofficial world's highest billiards of 499,135 in 1907 using a technique shortly before it was banned from the sport. In 1927, his prowess with the pendulum stroke led to that also being banned from use in competition.
His highest officially-recognised break was 901, which he compiled in 1916. He authored two books, Dainty Billiards: How to play the close cannon game (1925), and his autobiography Cannons and Big Guns (1928). Reece died on 16 October 1953, a week after suffering a stroke.
Early life
Reece was born in Oldham on 12 August 1873. In his teenage years he worked in a cotton mill. He used to visit a gymnasium to train for swimming and at the age of 16 started playing billiards on the gymnasium's table. After becoming a professional player, he had taken part in around forty money matches for stakes by March 1902, losing only about six. Reece accompanied Annette Kellermann on a section of her unsuccessful attempt to swim across the English Channel in 1905, being the only one of several supporters who was able to keep pace with her, and had ambitions to swim the channel himself.
Early billiards career and record break
In January 1907, Walter Lovejoy introduced the (also known as an anchor cannon) to the British game, in a match against Cecil Harverson, making a of 603 , which included 284 consecutive cradle cannons.
In a cradle cannon sequence, the two are played into a position near a where the can be successively played for a off them so that they remain in the same position at the conclusion for the next shot. This technique was quickly taken up by a number of other professional players, including Reece, who made a break of 1,825 in February, and another of 4,593 in March. A match of 150,000 up was arranged between Reece and Joe Chapman, with the intention of allowing a record break to be made. Reece compiled an unfinished break of 40,001, with the match being abandoned. An official record for a cradle cannon break was set at 42,746, by William Cook on 4 June 1907. Meanwhile, the Billiard Association had signalled that the cradle cannon would no longer be permitted in the game after the end of the playing season.
In a match held from 3 June to 6 July 1907, Reece scored a record break of 499,135 points using a cradle cannon system, although it was not an officially recognised record, as the public and press were not in attendance throughout. His opponent was Chapman, who received a start of 50,000 and scored 926 before Reece commenced his break. Reece managed to get the balls in position for cradle cannons after scoring 825 points, and was in play for 85 hours and 49 minutes for his break, averaging 97 points a minute. As billiards is a turn-based sport, Chapman did not get to play any shots during this time. During the match, at Burroughes Hall, Reece made 249,552 cradle cannons during his break. The Billiards Association decided at a meeting on 2 September 1907 to ban the cradle cannon, although as no consensus on the definition of a cradle cannon was reached, the responsibility to determine whether a player was playing cradle cannons was passed to match referees. The president of the Association, Sydenham Dixon, said during the meeting that "the stroke had been mastered by certain professionals and persisted in to an extent that made it farcical". The world record break under the current rules is 1,346 by Peter Gilchrist. The following year, Reece won the billiards competition of the 1908 American Tournament at Burroughes Hall.
The Billiards Control Club was established in 1908 as a rival to the Billiards Association and using a different set of rules, the main differences from the Association version being a simpler explanation of penalties and the stipulation that a player could not legally make more than two miss shots successively. Melbourne Inman, the Association champion, and Reece, each entered the Control Club Championship in 1910, along with H. W. Stevenson, who had been declared the Control Club champion in February 1909. Inman defeated Reece 9,000–5,103 in the preliminary round.