Carrom

Pot your own and shoot again

The rhythm of this carrom comes down to one rule: sink one of your own coins and you shoot again. That turns a single good turn into a run. You own the white coins and shoot from the bottom baseline. The computer owns the black coins and shoots from the top, like two people sitting across a real board. You are not fighting over the same targets. You are racing to clear your colour while the computer clears its own, and a player who strings three or four pots into one visit is very hard to catch. So think in runs, not single shots. Before you flick, know which coin you want next and how this shot sets it up.

Aiming, power and the striker foul

First slide the striker left or right along your baseline to line it up. Then pull back from it like a slingshot and release. The further you pull, the harder the flick, so aim and power are set by one drag, and a long hard pull is a committed shot you cannot take half back. Power discipline is what separates tidy players from messy ones. Use firm shots to break up clusters in the middle of the board, and soft ones anywhere near a pocket. The cardinal sin is pocketing the striker itself. That is a foul: you lose a point and one of your potted coins comes back onto the board. Nearly every striker foul comes from the same mistake, full power on a coin that needed one gentle touch.

How to aim like a carrom player

Real players aim with a simple picture. Draw a line in your head from the pocket back through the centre of the coin, and carry it on until it comes out the far side. That far point is your target. Send the striker there and the coin heads for the pocket. Say a white coin sits a hand's width to the right of the top-left pocket: the line from that pocket through the coin exits low on its right side, so slide the striker along your baseline until striker, exit point and pocket all line up, then flick smoothly.

Two more tools worth stealing from the real game. The cut: clip the edge of a coin thinly to send it off at a wide angle while the striker travels on, which is how players pocket coins that sit nowhere near a straight line. The rebound: when a coin hides behind traffic, bounce the striker off the frame first and take the coin from the other side. Both need less power than feels natural, because even a gentle flick sends a thinly-cut coin away at speed.

Common mistakes

• Full power on everything. Hard shots scatter your coins toward the computer's half and pot the striker far more often.
• Smashing mixed clusters. If a black coin drops, the point goes to the computer, so pick clusters apart from the white side.
• Treating the Queen as an afterthought. She is worth 3, and a planned Queen shot is usually the biggest single swing on the board.

The Queen and the score

The ringed, starred coin is the Queen, worth 3 against the ordinary 1 for a coin, so she can turn a whole game in one shot and she deserves a proper setup rather than a hopeful smash. Every coin scores for its owner. When the board runs low, count before you shoot. Ahead? Play soft, safe pots and protect the lead. Behind? The Queen or a brave long cut is how you close the gap. Highest score when the board empties takes the game.

A South Asian classic

Carrom grew up on the Indian subcontinent, and most accounts trace it to India, where it has been played in homes, clubs and street corners for well over a century. The real thing is a square plywood board with net pockets, dusted with fine powder so the coins glide, and you flick a heavy striker with a finger instead of dragging a mouse. It is a household fixture from Mumbai to Colombo to Dhaka, and it has had a governing body since 1988, when the International Carrom Federation was founded in Chennai. World titles are dominated by players from India and Sri Lanka. People sometimes call it finger billiards, and that is fair: the geometry is pool, but the touch is all its own.