Ha! You're lucky I spotted this, as I don't usually visit this forum. I am a long time player of
Carrom! Check that spelling out in google and you'll get more hits. Or just read my ramblings here...
Carrom is an Indian game and is the precursor to pool and snooker. Its board is square, with four netted pockets in each corner. Whereas pool has balls, Carrom has wooden coins. Whereas pool has green felt, Carrom has a smooth wooden surface which is dusted with a special powder to reduce friction. Whereas pool has a cue (stick) and cue ball, carrom has one larger coin - the striker - and no stick is required*. There is no stick required because you flick the striker with your finger onto the other coins to hit them in the pockets. Like pool, you have two sets of colours, typically black and white (although the white are often brown from the wood), and you must pot all your colours before your opponent does in order to win.
There is also 'an 8 ball'. But this is called 'the queen', is red in colour, and is of course a coin as well. You can pot it at any point in the game but must then pot one of your colour in the following shot to 'cover it' (if you fail to cover the queen, then she comes back out for others to try). Doing so awards you five points at game end, but only if you were the first to finish potting all your coins. If you potted the queen
and lost, you simply denied the winner the five points. You pick up further points upon winning, calculated simply by the amount of coins your opponent left unpotted by the end of 'the frame'.
The long form, classic game sees you playing frame after frame until one player reaches 29 points; 29 because the maximum points you can get from one frame is 9 for your all your opponent's coins (that's the number of coins of each colour at game start) + 5 for potting the queen also = 14. So you're guaranteed at least 3 frames.
Carrom also does not distinguish between which colour coin you hit first. You can hit the opponent's coins in order to pot yours. There are also no real penalties, such as double shots for your opponent if you foul. The only penalty in the rules is if you pot the striker, in which case you must take out one coin that you've already potted and place it in the middle to be potted again. If you have no coins potted and you pot the striker, it is consider 'a debt to the table' and you must put the first one you pot back.
There is also another version played and that is called 'Money'. This sees each colour fixed with a certain value. I play with whites = 10, blacks = 20 and the red = 50. You must simply pot as much value as you can each frame. The player with the least 'money' then puts all his/her coins in the middle, everyone else matches the value and you start a new frame. This allows players to 'make a profit', by potting more than they put in. This continues until one player has horded all the money for themselves and knocked everyone else out.
The classic game can be two or four player, with two players opposite each other on the board teaming up on the same colour coins. In money, it can be two, three or four players, but it's always 'every man for himself!'
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*FYI: It was the British who found Carrom and adapted it into Pool and Snooker (they just needed to have a big stick and balls to feel like a man
)
Also, I believe the French have a version, which they call Carram (I think) and that sees a cue stick being used on the striker coin. But I've never played in real life, only online.
