Merit Awards

The CA Merit Award scheme was set up to recognise improvement in play and to encourage enterprising play.

• The Bronze Award Badge is awarded for making a ten-hoop break, using bisques if necessary. This is your target once you have grasped the idea of using your bisques to build and continue a break, therefore starting to attack opponents positively and confidently.
• The Silver Award Badge comes at the point in your development where you are conceding bisques most of the time, or are taking the first steps into the Advanced game. This award is given for achieving a twelve hoop-point break, sometimes with one or two peels, without using bisques either to set up the break or to continue it, while winning the game.
• The Gold Award Badge is for your first winning Triple Peel in qualifying competitions. The manoeuvre comprises peeling a ball through 4-back, penult and rover, while playing the appropriate break with the second ball, and pegging both out for the direct victory (if it was your partner ball) or going on to win the 3-ball ending if it was your opponent's. It is more often seen in Advanced Play, as one of the standard tactics to avoid giving one of the lifts or contact, but it is also used by the experienced player faced with a fence-full of bisques in a Handicap Tournament. Naturally bisques cannot be used to hit in, or to set up the break, or to carry it out, but that does not preclude qualification in a game in which the player has previously used bisques.
• The Platinum Award Badge is for your first winning Sextuple Peel in qualifying competitions.

Many members have won their first badge after attending one of the regional Bronze or Improvers Courses.

Award winners are recorded in the history section.