He made the unofficial world's highest billiards break of 499,135 in 1907 using a cradle cannon technique shortly before it was banned from the sport.

[7] This technique was quickly taken up by a number of other professional players, including Reece, who made a break of 1,825 in February, and another of 4,593 in March.

Meanwhile, the Billiard Association had signalled that the cradle cannon would no longer be permitted in the game after the end of the playing season.

The president of the Association, Sydenham Dixon, said during the meeting that "the stroke had been mastered by certain professionals and persisted in to an extent that made it farcical".

[14] The Billiards Control Club was established in 1908 as a rival to the Billiards Association and using a different set of rules, the main differences from the Association version being a simpler explanation of penalties and the stipulation that a player could not legally make more than two miss shots successively.

[17] Inman recorded a decisive 18,000–9,675 win over Reece in a match that The Sporting Life described as "the most spiritless affair ever witnessed on a billiard table" because it was so one-sided.

[8]: 212  There were six participants in the tournament, with Inman and Willie Smith deciding not to play because of a disagreement with the organisers over the venue.

[22] In conversation with George Nelson of the Yorkshire Evening Post, reported in the paper in 1941, Reece spoke about his record break.

Following a rise in the use of the cradle cannon following Lovejoy's employment of the method in 1907, the record was frequently increasing, which meant more expense for table manufacturers.

He says that the manufacturing firm Burroughes and Watts told him that they would only pay out for a break "the size of which will stop all further attempts at records", to which he replied that he would need an opponent and a venue for a month.

"[25] Reece's book Dainty Billiards: How to play the close cannon game was published by C. Arthur Pearson in 1925.

[29] Reece married Laura Lydia Williams on the morning of 6 June 1908, before continuing a match against John Roberts Jr that afternoon.

[30] During World War II he toured the United Kingdom playing exhibition matches to raise funds for the British Red Cross.