Tom Reece

Who was Tom Reece?

Tom Reece was a Welsh professional player of English billiards. Reece competed for the World Professional Billiards Championship six times but each time finished as runner-up.

In 1907, he scored a record break of 499,135 points over a period of five weeks, without a miss, using an anchor or cradle cannon nurse system. His opponent was Joe Chapman, and the match was played in Soho, London, England. Under the current rules, which forbid such repetitive nurse shots, it is unlikely that this score will even remotely be approached. His robotic play went a long way to developing new rules to stop such high breaks based on monotonous, duplicate shots: Immediately after his record was set, rules were implemented such that no more than 25 consecutive cannons could be used; other, more stringent restrictions followed in later years.