Types Of Carrom Games

Variants
Family-Point Carrom
Simple-Point Carrom (Family-Point Carrom) is a variant that is very popular with the young and old, or when playing with an odd number of players.[citation needed] Players are allowed to pocket carrom men of any colour. A majority of people play by the following simple rules:

The objective of play is to use a striker disk with a flick of the finger to make contact with and move a carrom man (or coin) into one of four corner pockets.
Typically a Black carrom man (coin) gives 5 points, white/khaki color (or non-black) gives 10 points and Red color (queen) gives 25 points to the player.
Pocketing the queen must be followed by pocketing another carrom man (coin) on the same strike. To get Red color (queen) points, one needs to put a carrom man of any color in the pocket after the queen. If the player fails to cover the queen in this fashion, the queen is put back in the center of the board. The player or team will win if they have the most points.
Sets of 1, 3 or 5 are common. With the points system, if one team/player gets queen points early in the game, the opponent still has a good chance to win by earning more points.
This style of play is widely accepted in many areas of South Asia.

Point Carrom
Point Carrom is a variant that is popular with children or an odd number of players. Game play is as described above with a variation. Players are allowed to pocket carrom men of any colour.  Carrom men of either colour are assigned 1 point each. The red queen is assigned 3 points. Pocketing the queen must be followed by pocketing another carrom man on the same or subsequent strike. The first player to reach 21 points is declared the winner.
If no player reaches 21 points, the player with the highest points is declared the winner. If the scores are tied, a tie-breaker must be played. Players who are tied (in points) select a colour. They are allowed to pocket carrom men of an alternate colour only on rebound.
This style of play is common in some areas of East Asia. Total-Point Carrom[edit]
Total point carrom is a variant of point carrom, in which the black carrom men are worth 5 points and the white ones are worth 10 points. The red queen is assigned 50 points and must have a subsequent carrom man pocketed after it. To win, a player must receive all the carrom men on the board. After the first round the player or team with the lowest score puts all their carrom men in the center. The others must match this score in the center and the players play for the carrom men in the center. They repeat this until one team or player has all the carrom men. This style of play is widely accepted in many areas of India and Pakistan.
Professional Carrom Each Team or player is assigned a color coin and can only pocket that color coin. Pocketing the queen must be followed by pocketing another coin on the same strike. The red 'queen,' can be pocketed at any time after sinking your first piece but must be sunk before your last one. After pocketing the queen, you must sink one of your carrom men, thereby 'covering' it, into any pocket in the next shot, or she is returned to the center spot.
Once the queen is covered, whoever clears all their carrom men first wins the 'board'.
Queen & cover can be pocketed in the same turn, irrespective of the order of falling of coin in the pockets.
The winner of a board collects one point for each of the opponent's carrom men left at the finish and three points for the queen if covered by the winner (if covered by the loser, no-one gets those points). No more points are collected for the queen after your score reaches 21.
As per new rules a game consists of 21 points .
When placing the striker on the board to shoot, it must touch both 'base lines', either covering the end circle completely, or not touching it at all. The striker may not touch the diagonal arrow line. Shooting styles are very personal - whichever 'grip' works for you is fine as long as you 'flick' the striker and don't push it. Generally, it is best to orient your body in order to see the line of your aim while shooting comfortably; you may not move or leave your chair. For forward shots, you can use your index finger, middle finger, or even the 'scissors' shot. Before shooting, try touching the striker with your fingernail, to be sure that its really on line. This will improve your accuracy and prevent you from hurting your finger.
Carrom men can be struck directly only if they are not touching the player’s baseline or situated behind the base line. If the carrom man is behind the baseline, the player must hit the carrom man by rebounding the carrom striker off any side of the carrom board or any other carrom piece on the board
Sinking the striker costs you one piece and your turn. But, if you sink a piece in the same shot, then two come up and you do not shoot again.
After sinking the striker, your opponent places the due piece(s) within the center circle. If you haven't sunk one yet, you owe one.
If while shooting for the queen you also sink one of your carrom men in the same shot, the queen is automatically covered, no matter which went first.
If a piece jumps off the board, it is placed on the center spot. If pieces land on end or are overlapping, they are left that way.
If the center spot is partially covered when replacing the queen or a jumped piece, the piece should cover as much red as possible. If totally covered, the piece is placed opposite the next player behind the red spot.
If you touch your last piece directly before the queen, you have to pay a penalty.
If you sink your opponent's piece, you lose your turn. If you sink their last piece, you lose the board and three points.
If you sink your last piece before the queen, you lose the board, three points and one point for each of your opponent's pieces left.[15]
If the striker does not leave both lines, go again. You get three tries to break before losing your turn.[15]
These rules are mostly played in UK and India.

Duboo

A popular variant of the game called Duboo is played mostly in Karachi, the largest city of Pakistan. In dubbo the size of the board is bigger than carrom, and instead of flicking the striker people usually slide it.

Board variations

Carrom boards are available in various board sizes and corner pocket sizes. There are smaller boards and boards with larger pockets. Boards with larger pockets are used by beginners for easier game play. On traditional carrom boards, the corner pockets are only slightly larger than the carrom men, but smaller than the striker. On boards with larger pockets, it is possible to pocket the striker, resulting in a "scratch shot" as in Pool. This results in a "due." On a "due", the player has to return one previously pocketed carrom man to the board. When the scores are tied at a point in the carrom game, a tie-breaker is played. The team which has pocketed the "queen" does not gain any advantage. The Standardised Association and Federation size is 29" x 29" Play Surface with borders between 2" each to 4" each. Other play areas are not used in Tournaments and Competitions.

American carrom[edit]

Main article: Carrom Company
American carrom is a variant of carrom derived in America by missionaries to the East, around 1890. Concerned with young boys loitering around pool halls, a Sunday school teacher named Henry L. Haskell altered the game for Western tastes. Much of the game is the same, but the striker's weight is reduced and the carrom men are smaller. Generally, instead of disks, carrom men (including the striker) are rings, originally of wood but today commercially made of light plastic. In addition, as an alternative to using the fingers to flick the striker, some of the American carrom boards use miniature cue sticks. American carrom boards also have pockets built into the corners, rather than circular holes in the board, to make pocketing easier. While traditionally made boards vary widely, current commercially produced American carrom boards are 28 inches (71 cm) square, are printed with checkerboard and backgammon patterns, among others, and are sold with dice, skittles, etc. to allow other games to be played on the same board. These boards are also built to play crokinole with.

A relatively rare series of makes among Western Carrom boards contains a variant referred to colloquially as a "Carrom maze" on the reverse, in which an entirely different game is played. The oblique side of the board is fashioned into a labyrinth via the addition of small plywood "walls" that restrict the carrom to defined paths; the objective becomes to traverse the maze with a single carrom and reach a region designated as the end of the maze successfully in the least amount of strokes (similarly to golf), or to be the first to finish the maze among competitors. Various regions within the maze, often found in "traps" or sharp corners and differently colored or designated via artwork, contain regions in which the player's carrom must not be caught when coming to rest, at risk of penalty of extra strokes or forced relocation of the player's carrom to an earlier position. Positive or bonus regions, usually small and hard to target, may offer "shortcuts" relocating to a region nearer the goal, or stroke count reduction. In solo play, course records may be kept for public tables.


Japanese carrom[edit]

Carrom was introduced to Japan in the early 20th century. Carrom became popular as tōkyūban (闘球盤, Japanese for "pounding board", "fight ball board" or "throw ball board") and it fell in popularity in the Showa period. However, carrom is still popular in Hikone, Shiga under the name Hikone Karomu (Hikone carrom). The Hikone carrom board has larger pockets (not unlike those of pichenotte), the discs are arranged in a ring (also like in pichenotte), each player is given twelve discs instead of nine, and the queen (known as the "jack") is pocketed last (similar to Eight-ball or Black ball).

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