On the 6^th July, 1907, the Welsh professional billiards player, Tom Reece (1873-1953), compiled a record break of 499,135 points over a period of five weeks in Soho, London. His opponent was Joe Chapman, in a match which was played to 500,000 points, with the express intention of trying to better the recently set record for highest break.

It is unlikely that this score will even remotely be approached, as Reece’s robotic play went a long way to developing new rules to stop such high breaks based on monotonous, duplicate shots.

Under the current rules, repetitive ‘nurse’ shots are forbidden, and the world record is a 1,276 break set by the Indian professional Geet Siriram Sethi (born 1961) who dominated the sport throughout much of the 1990s. He is a six-time winner of the professional-level and a three-time winner of the amateur World Championships.

Reece competed for the World Professional Billiards Championship six times (1912,1913,1914,1921,1924,1925) finishing as runner-up on each occasion

At the turn of the 20th century it is said Thomas Reece, and  the London born Melbourne Inman (1878-1951) were good friends, but fierce rivals on the table. This boiled over one evening at Thurston’s where the pair played a match for the Championship Cup, which Inman won. Inman was about to be presented with the trophy by Lord Alvertson, the high-court judge who had recently sentenced to death the murderer Dr. Crippen . Unable to keep quiet, it is alleged Reece told his Lordship, ‘if you knew as much about Inman as I do, you’d have hanged him and given Crippen the cup.’

6 July, 2019