How to play carrom 如何玩克朗棋

Carrom is a popular Indian game for two or four players. You play it on a square board with a hole in each corner. You also need twenty discs. Nine are black, nine are white, one is red, and the last disc is a ‘striker’, which is bigger and heavier than the other discs. Players push the striker with one hand so that it hits another disc and pushes it into a hole. This is called ‘sinking’ a disc.

The board has two circles in the middle, one inside the other. At the start of the game, place the red disc or ‘queen’ on the small circle and the black and white discs in the larger circle around it, in a special pattern. There are four long, thin rectangles on each side of the board, parallel to the edge, with a circle at each end. Place the striker inside a rectangle or in a circle before pushing it. There are also four lines running from each corner towards the centre of the board ‘foul lines’. During the game, only your hand may cross these lines.

Sit beside the board. You mustn’t get up while playing. Choose a colour, black or white. Then hit the striker with your finger towards the coloured discs. If you sink one, it goes out of the game. Then return the striker to a starting position and have another turn. But if you make a foul, like sinking the striker or another player’s disc, one of your discs returns to the board.

Either player can ‘sink’ the queen, but you must sink a disc of your own colour first. After sinking the queen, you must sink another disc in your colour immediately. If you fail, the queen returns to the board.

The winner is the first person to sink all their discs. You get one point for each of the other player’s discs on the board, plus three points if you sank the queen. Usually, people play several games, and the first person to get 25 points is the winner.

Why not watch this game online? You might decide to play it yourself!