How to play
Carrom is a flicking game for two on a square board with a pocket in each corner. White has nine white coins and goes first; Black has nine black. The red queen sits in the middle.
- Slide the striker along your line (or tap the line), tap the board to aim, choose the power, then Strike. The dotted circle shows where the striker will touch the first coin, and the short line where that coin will go.
- Pocket one of your coins and you strike again. Pocketing the other player’s coins counts for them.
- Pocket the queen, then “cover” it by pocketing one of your own coins on the next strike (or the same one). Fail to cover it and it goes back to the middle.
- Pocketing the striker is a foul: your turn ends and one of your pocketed coins comes back to the middle, along with any of yours from that strike.
- Nobody may pocket the last coin of a colour while the queen is still in play; it comes back.
- The first to pocket all nine wins the board and scores a point for each coin the other player still has out, plus 3 for the queen if they covered it.
Tips
Coins sitting near a pocket go in with a soft touch, and a soft strike keeps the striker from following them in. Hit a coin on the side away from the pocket you want, and use the sides of the board to bank shots round coins in the way.
These are simplified family rules; there are no thumb shots and no team play.