Carrom (also spelled carom) is a cue sport-based tabletop game of South Asian origin. The game is very popular in India, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and surrounding areas, and is known by various names in different languages. In South Asia, many clubs and cafés hold regular tournaments. Carrom is very commonly played by families, including children, and at social functions. Different standards and rules exist in different areas .

The game of carrom is believed to have originated from the Indian subcontinent. One carrom board with its surface made of glass is still available in one of the palaces in Patiala, India.[1] It became very popular among the masses after World War I. State-level competitions were being held in different States of India during early part of the nineteenth century. Serious carrom tournaments may have begun in Sri Lanka in 1935 but by 1958, both India and Sri Lanka had formed official federations of carrom clubs, sponsoring tournaments and awarding prizes.

The International Carrom Federation (ICF) was formed in the year 1988 in Chennai, India. The formal rules for the Indian version of the game were published in 1988. In the same year the ICF officially codified the rules. The game has been very popular throughout South Asia, mainly in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. It has gained some popularity in Europe and the United States where it has been introduced by the Indian diaspora. The United States Carrom Association reports on competitions in the US and Canada and has a player ranking list as of the last tournament.

Similar games

Aside from cue sports, carrom also have similarities to table shuffleboard, and shove ha'penny; though smaller. It may be ancestral (via British India and French Indochina) to several similar Western games including novuss, crokinole, pichenotte, and pitchnut.

The objective of play is to use a striker disk with a flick of the finger to make contact with and move lighter object disks called carrom men, which are thus propelled into one of four corner pockets. The striker and carrom men are analogous to the cue ball and object ball in cue sports, respectively.

The aim of the game is to pot (pocket) one's nine carrom men and the queen before the one's opponent does. The carrom queen is analogous to the 8 ball (black ball) in the game of eight-ball pool.

The game is usually played on a board made of plywood. The dimensions of the standardised game is a 29 inches (74 cm) square playing surface on a board of lacquered plywood. The edges of the playing surface are bounded by bumpers of wood, and the underside of each pocket is covered by a net which is 10 cm2 or larger.

Carrom is played using small disks of wood or plastic known as carrom men (sometimes abbreviated CM, c.m. c/m, etc.). These pieces, aside from the special queen, may also be known as seeds, coins, pawns (as in chess), or pucks. Carrom men are designed to slide when struck and are made with a smooth surface that slides easily when laid flat on the board. They are struck by a Striker of standard specification which is larger and heavier. Carrom follows similar "strike and pocket" games, like pool, with its use of rebounds, angles and obstruction of opponent's carrom pieces.

A carrom set contains 19 pieces (striker not included) in three distinct colours. Two colours to represent the players' pieces and one colour for the queen. The usual colours are white (or unstained) and black for the players and red for the queen.

ICF-approved pieces must have a diameter of no more than 3.18 cm and no less than 3.02 cm. The pieces must be between 7 and 9 mm thick. The pieces have a plain, rounded edge. The mass of the pieces must be between 5.0 and 5.5g.

The red disk is called the queen; it is the most valuable piece. During board setup, it is placed at the centre of the circle. In accordance with the ICF rules, pocketing the queen adds 3 points to the player's total score. The dimensions of the queen must be the same as those of other carrom men.

The player must pocket the queen and subsequently pocket a carrom man of the player's own colour. This is termed covering the queen. If, by mistake, a player puts a carrom man of the opposite team in the pocket after "pocketing" the queen, then the queen has to be placed in the centre of the board again.

If the player fails to pocket a subsequent carrom man, the queen is replaced at the centre of the board.

If the player pockets his or her opponent's last carrom man before pocketing the queen, then it's a foul.

If a player puts the queen and a carrom man of the player's own colour in the pocket with one use of the striker, the queen is automatically covered, no matter which went first.

Fine-grained powder is used on the board to enable the pieces to slide easily. Boric acid powder is the most commonly used for this purpose.The EU has classified Boric acid as a "Serious Health Hazard" and states that "this substance may damage fertility or the unborn child"
In the UK, many players use a version of anti-set-off spray powder from the printing industry[citation needed] which has specific electrostatic properties with particles of 50 micrometres in diameter. The powder is made from pure, food-grade vegetable starch.

Order of play is determined by the process of "calling the carrom men" or "the toss". Before commencing each match, an umpire hides one black carrom in one hand and one white carrom man in the other hand. The players guess which colour carrom man is being held in each hand. The player who guesses correctly wins the toss.

The winner of the toss strikes first, which is called the opening break. The winner of the toss has the option to change sides from white to black and give up the opening break. The winner of the toss may not pass this decision to the other player. If the winner of the toss chooses to change sides then the loser must strike first.

Each team or player is assigned a colour and can only pocket that colour of carrom men.Pocketing the queen must be followed by pocketing another coin on the same strike. The queen can only be pocketed if the player has already pocketed a carrom man but has not yet pocketed the last carrom man of the player's colour as a carrom man must be pocketed to cover it. Once the queen is covered, whoever clears all their carrom men first wins the board. Queen and cover can be pocketed in the same turn, irrespective of the order they enter the pocket.

The winner of a board collects one point for each of the opponent's carrom men left at the finish and three points for the queen if covered by the winner (if covered by the loser, no-one gets those points). No more points are collected for the queen after your score reaches 21.

Board variations

When placing the striker on the board to shoot, it must touch both base lines, either covering the end circle completely, or not touching it at all. The striker may not touch the diagonal arrow line. Shooting styles can vary between players, but all shots must involve flicking the striker and not pushing it. While players may orient their bodies for aiming, they must remain seated for the shot. Carrom men can be struck directly only if they are not touching the player’s baseline or situated behind the base line.

According to new rule if the carrom man is behind the baseline, the player can directly hit the carrom man by the carrom striker unlike before we have to strike the carrom men off any side of the carrom board or any other carrom piece on the board but not directly.

Carrom boards are available in various board sizes and corner-pocket sizes. There are smaller boards and boards with larger pockets. Boards with larger pockets are used by beginners for easier game play. On traditional carrom boards, the corner pockets are only slightly larger than the carrom men, but smaller than the striker. On boards with larger pockets, it is possible to pocket the striker, resulting in a "scratch shot" as in pool. This results in a "due". On a due, the player has to return one previously pocketed carrom man to the board. The standardised association and federation size is a 74 × 74 cm (29 × 29 inch) square playing surface with 5–10 cm (2–4 in) borders. Other play-area sizes are not used in tournaments and competitions.

American carrom is a variant developed around 1890 in the United States by Christian missionaries to Asia, whAmerican carrom is a variant developed around 1890 in the United States by Christian missionaries to Asia, who brought the game back with them. Concerned with young boys loitering around pool halls (where gambling was common), a Sunday school teacher named Henry L. Haskell altered the game for Western tastes. Much of the game is the same, but the striker's weight is reduced and the carrom men are smaller. Generally, instead of disks, carrom men (including the striker) are rings, originally of wood but today commercially made of light plastic. In addition, as an alternative to using the fingers to flick the striker, some of the American carrom boards use miniature cue sticks. American carrom boards also have pockets built into the corners, rather than circular holes in the board, to make pocketing easier. While traditionally made boards vary widely, current commercially produced American carrom boards, by the Carrom Company of Michigan, are squares measuring 28 inches (71 cm) to a side, are printed with checkerboard and backgammon patterns, among others, and are sold with dice, skittles, etc. to allow other games to be played on the same board. These boards may also be printed with the circular pattern for playing crokinole.

There were several companies that made copies of Haskell's carroms game board. The Transogram Company made a version of Haskell's game board in the 1950s and called it Skooker.[18] Coleco in the 1980s made reproductions with names like "Carom-playing Games Board" with up to 202 derived replication games.[18] Some variants in the 1970s were called "101 Games Board" and "Carom-playing 166 Games Board".[18] An ice-box manufacturer made "Combinola" and "Crokinola" boards as variants of the game.