HOOP-LA !

Gisborne Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 3634, 21 September 1912, Page 7

HOOP-LA !

AN INTERESTING MAGISTERIAL DECISION.

[PEE PEERS ASSOCIATION.] AUCKLAND, Sept. 20. Mr Cutten, S.M., this morning gave judgment in the ease in which Carl Waeliner was charged with playing a game of chance. The police ease was that Wachner ran in Queen Street an amusement saloon, in which the attraction, which was a variation of the well-known

“Hoop-La,’’ in which clients were invited for a consideration to try their skill in ringing with light cane hoops certain articles of jewellery to which they became entitled if they encircled them with hoops. ’flic police held that clients tried their luck, not their skill, in such a case, contending that the game was one in which the element of luck predominated. The .Magistrate, after having seen a demonstration of the game by an expert, decided that the game was one like billiards, of mixed skill and luck. He instanced the game of billiards known as “pool” as a similar mixture of skill and chance, and decided that the element of skill predominated in the game, which was the subject of the case. Consequently the game, in his opinion, did not come within the meaning of the Gaming and Lotteries Act, and the case was dismissed.