About Carroms
Carroms is a popular table game with middle eastern origins. Carroms is very much like billiards, only with small checker-size disks instead of balls. These disks are called carrom-men. Carroms is easy to learn and easy to teach. For that reason, carroms is a popular game at some elementary schools. The game can be played by two players or in two teams.
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The Table
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The Carrom board is a 29 by 29 inch square table with bumpers to prevent the disks from being knocked off of the board. There are also pockets on each of the corners of the table to catch the disks. In the center of the carrom table there is a painted circle. All of the disks are placed in the center of this circle at the start of a carrom game. The table itself is coated with fine powder to allow the carrom-men to glide easily across the board.
The Carrom-men
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Carrom is played with checker sized disks called carrom-men. There are 18 carrom-men, and one very important queen carrom-man.The queen is placed at the center of the circle on the carrom table. If a player should hit this disk into a pocket, that player can reserve the queen for future use in the game.
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The Carrom Striker
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The striker is heavier than the carrom-men and is used in the same manner as a cue ball in billiards. The striker can be struck with a small carrom cue, but it is traditionally played by flicking it with the fingers to break the carrom-men out of the circle and into the table pockets. Carrom strikers can be very elaborately decorated.
How to Play Carroms
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Decide who will shoot first by having a non-player hold a carrom-man of each color in each hand. Have both of the players guess which color is in which hand. The player who guesses correctly has won the toss and may go first. The object of the game is simple; get all of your carrom-men into pockets before your opponent does. A player can be fouled if any body part crosses over the painted diagonal lines on the carroms table.
Playing Carroms for Points
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Each carrom-men pocketed, regardless of color, earns the shooter a point. If the queen is pocketed, the shooter retains use of the queen as well as three points. When all the carrom-men are pocketed, the points are tallied and the winner is declared.
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Resources
- Photo Credit commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Carrom_men.jpg
