ratively simple and very
easily remembered after having been used once or twice. The player who
serves first must serve six times in succession, and then his opponent
does the same, the service changing always after each one has served six
consecutive times. One fault and one good service; two faults; or one
good service counts as a service. After the first, third, fifth, or, in
other words, every alternate series of service, the players change
courts, thus making each six successive services one series of services.
The first player to score one hundred points wins the game; but the
match can be played for any number of points--more or less than a
hundred--as the contestants may agree upon beforehand. The usual figure,
however, is one hundred. If the score comes to be 99-all, play goes on
as before, until one of the players has a majority of two points. He
then wins; but no game can be won by a lesser majority than two points.

The odds in the regular old-fashioned method of counting are, briefly,
thus: A "bisque" is one point that can be taken by the receiver of the
odds at any time during the set except after a service is delivered, or,
if he is serving, after a fault. "Half fifteen" is one stroke given at
the beginning of the second, fourth, and every alternate game of a set,
and "fifteen" is one stroke given at the beginning of every game. In the
same way "thirty" is two strokes given at the beginning of every game,
whereas "half thirty" is one stroke given at the beginning of the first
game, two at the beginning of the second, one at the beginning of the
third, and so on, two and one, alternately, until the end of the set.
"Forty" is three strokes before every game, "half forty" three and two,
alternately, as before. "Owed odds" signifies that the giver of the odds
starts behind scratch. Thus "owe half fifteen" means that one stroke is
owed at the beginning of the first, third, fifth, and every alternate
game of the set. Other "owed odds" are reckoned inversely in the same
manner as given odds. If a player gives odds of "half court," he agrees
to play in a certain half of the court, either the right or the left,
and he loses a stroke whenever he returns a ball outside any of the
lines that bound that half court.

But the newest of all the systems of odds, and the one now most
generally used by experts, is called the "quarter" system. In this
method fifteen is divided into four quarters, and thus a closer handicap