The Bil­liard Ball Trick

Recently I atten­ded a con­ven­tion here in Ger­many (the preselec­tions for the Ger­man Mas­ter­ships) and I watched with anti­cip­a­tion the con­test – espe­cially the genre manip­u­la­tions. And there it was again: the old Bil­liard Ball Trick. Well, it is a clas­sic, and (maybe due to the mar­ket­ing of all the deal­ers fea­tur­ing the latex/​silicone balls from Fakini and the like) it seems to be pop­u­lar again amongst the manip­u­lat­ors. See how many of the bunch of Korean manip­u­lat­ors per­form some ver­sion of it. Real clas­sics nev­er die …

BUT then: I am tired of see­ing grown-ups play­ing around with rub­ber balls! I know the white and colored balls, made from sil­ic­one and I know how “easy” one can handle them. Due to this, tons of dif­fer­ent flour­ishes and dif­fi­cult moves were cre­ated and per­formed. For me, they all lack the impact and the geni­us of the “old timers” like Roy Ben­son, Alan Wakeling and Cardini. Take a look at this pub­li­city photo of Cardini as an example:

What he is hold­ing between his fin­gers are bil­liard balls or snook­er balls (at least they look like this) and one can see this. Now a grown-up in full tails with genu­ine bil­liard balls is still strange, but not as strange as someone with rub­ber balls – at least to me. So why is this trick no longer per­formed with genu­ine balls?

I know the argu­ments: the sil­ic­one balls are easi­er to handle, have per­fect shells, they bounce, have the right weight and size. And I say: Bull­shit! These are rub­ber balls and the audi­ence can see it. They are way too small most of the times. It is sort of infant­ile play­ing around with these. Also, the enhanced and easy grip seduces to hold them all the time between the fin­gers and do silly “moves” with them to show off. The only (!) manip­u­la­tion num­ber I can accept with these balls is Norbert Fer­ré – because of his char­ac­ter on stage, which makes these sil­ic­one balls look appropriate.

The old timers had a dif­fer­ent concept with this trick: the balls were held on dis­play in the (say) right hand, while the left hand mys­ter­i­ously pro­duced the oth­er balls. The main effect was the magic­al pro­duc­tion (and maybe a col­or change) of the balls. The oth­er hand acted as a sort of “dis­play” to hold the pro­duced balls. Fur­ther­more, the balls would be knocked against each oth­er to make an aud­ible proof them being the real thing. They would even roll the balls off stage, and thereby the audi­ence could hear they were real bil­liard balls. A clev­er and impress­ive end­ing to a bil­liard ball routine, per­fect theat­er. Tommy Won­der went out of his way to tinker with rub­ber balls to make them sound like bil­liard balls when knocked togeth­er. He knew that this IS very import­ant for the people. Most of us unfor­tu­nately ignore this and con­tin­ue to work with plastic or rub­ber balls …

As well, the use of the shell is often immod­er­ate. As if the whole trick depended only on this gim­mick. There are tons of ways to pro­duce equally effect­ive sequences without hav­ing to resort to the shell. The slip­pery factor can be over­come by treat­ing the hands before­hand (after all, it is a stage routine, so one has to pre­pare any­way). The real balls have lots of advant­ages, above al the weight. The fam­ous “Leipzig Drop” or the Silent Mora moves depend on a cer­tain weight. Real bil­liards have it. Cer­tain pen­et­ra­tions through a handker­chief are only pos­sible with the smooth sur­face of the real balls. The size? Well – snook­er balls are smal­ler, and Brit­ish pool balls as well (you can get them with a dia­met­er of 52 mm). Just add enough prac­tice and the fin­gers will adjust …

Then one “for­got­ten” thing, many of the mod­ern manip­u­lat­ors neg­lect: the box. Cara­m­bolage balls come in boxes. Snook­er balls are stored in boxes. Boxes made out of wood, plastic or card­board. People know this. There is noth­ing more nat­ur­al to get out a box with say three balls inside. People recog­nize this imme­di­ately and they know that it is bil­liard balls in there. And the box for three (cara­m­bolage) balls makes it pos­sible to steal anoth­er ball in full sight (see the book about Roy Ben­son’s work on this). So why not use it? It is a subtle and great prin­ciple and concept.

So, it would­n’t hurt if we recon­sider this clas­sic of magic and put it back into the hands of com­pet­ent manip­u­lat­ors, who use their brain and abil­it­ies (and don’t fry away from more prac­ti­cing time). The bil­liard ball trick has this name, and there­fore should be done with the real stuff.

There we go …