Games - Carrom

	Games - Carrom

Carrom is a family of tabletop games sharing a similarity in that their mechanics lie somewhere between billiards and shuffleboard.

Carrom is also the name of a games company in the United States which produces a specific variant of a Carrom board (as well as NokHockey and other games). Generally speaking, the variant of Carrom played on Carrom brand boards is called "American Carrom". For the remainder of this article, this distinction will be used.

Origins

The origins of Carrom are uncertain. Western sources suggest that the game is of Indian origin while some Indian sources claim the game is of British origin. Yemen, Ethiopia and North Africa are also suggested as potential regions of origin.

Equipment

The game is played on a board of lacquered plywood, normally 29" square. The edges of the playing surface are bounded by bumpers of wood. The object of the game is to strike a heavy disk called a "striker" such that it contacts lighter disks called "carrommen" and propels them into one of four corner pockets. The carrommen come in two colors denoting the two players (or, in doubles play, teams). Traditionally, these colors are white (or unfinished) and black. The breaker always plays white. An additional carromman is colored red and called the "queen".

Rules

The aim of the game is to pot your nine carrommen before your opponent pots his. However before sinking your final carromman, the queen must be pocketed and then "covered" by pocketing one of your carromman on the same or subsequent strike. Fouls, such as crossing the diagonal lines on the board with any part of your body, or potting the striker, lead to carrommen being returned to the board.

American Carrom

American Carrom is a variant on Carrom brought to America from the East by missionaries around 1890. Believing that the game required restructuring for Western tastes, a Sunday school teacher named Henry Haskell altered the game. Much of the game is the same, but the striker's weight is reduced and the carrommen are smaller. Generally, instead of disks of solid wood, ivory, or acrylic, carommen (including the striker) are rings, originally of wood but now made of light plastic in the American variety. In addition, as an alternative to using the fingers to flick the striker, American Carrom comes with short cue sticks. American Carrom boards also have pockets built into the corners to make pocketing easier. Generally speaking American Carrom boards are printed with checkerboard and backgammon patterns and are sold with checkers, chess pieces, skittles, etc to allow for some limited variant of over 100 traditional games to be played on them. Often, these boards are also built to play Crokinole. Generally speaking, the Carrom community considers American Carrom to be an inferior version of the game, more like a child's toy.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Carrom ]

Games - Carrom

Origins

Equipment

Rules

American Carrom

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