What is balkline?  It’s a game of pool, but you don’t use just one cue, but two cues and you will also have a red ball that is called the object ball.  The game of balkline is played on a different table, it’s 5’ x 10’, there are no pockets on the table, but it is divided by what is called balklines, thus the name of the game.  Each region that is marked off are called balk spaces.  You score points by landing in the spaces, but it’s a limited amount if the object ball is in the space you land in.

Before the development of balkline another game came about it was called straight rail.  This game is much harder to play.  If a player was skilled at the game they would be able to score a huge amount of points, in which the balls would move only slightly in the area of play.  Straight rail would not penalize you for the object ball being in the balk space.  To win the game you would need to make it to a previously agreed number of points.

It’s amazing to a lot of the Carom players that the game of balkline came about, seeing as how hard it was to play straight rail, they felt that players wouldn’t be challenged anymore than that game.  But the real reason that balkline came up was because some of the more skilled and developed players could simply score quickly and with no problem in straight rail.  With balkline adding the balk space rule of the object ball being in a region it made the game a bit harder to win quickly at.

The game of balkline was thought to be created in Europe around the 1700’s.  When it was first created straight rail had no rules as to how you would score, or on the regions of the table.  In 1855, the United States hosted the first public stakes game of straight rail it took place in San Francisco.  In this came they used what is called the technique of crotching.  What crotching is in reference to the corner space where the rails meet at.  If a person could get the two object balls to stick in place there it was considered a crotch and they could score continually off those two object balls.  Of course with such a trick it was banned in 1862.

Straight rail continued to become more popular among people and the skills that one had to play the game were very high.  People were constantly looking for ways to score more and more points.  Plus the creations of new shots like the gather shot, and nurse shots.

Balkline and straight rail are both highly skilled games, but if you want a challenge try and find a place you can at least try the game once!