Carrom Club

Carrom Club is a free carrom board game you can play online in your browser, on a phone or a computer, with no download. The square wooden board sits in front of you exactly as it does in a club: nine white men, nine black men and the red queen in the classic flower in the middle, a pocket in every corner and your striker on the baseline nearest you. Slide the striker along the baseline, press on it and pull back like a slingshot, then let go to flick it into the pieces. It is one of our board games and aim games, and it plays the same on our mobile games and PC games pages.

The main mode is the Club Ladder, played by the classic carrom rules against a computer opponent. You play white and break every board. Pocket one of your own pieces and you shoot again; miss and the CPU slides its striker along the far baseline and takes its shot, with its aim line showing on the board. Pocket the striker and it is a foul: the pieces that shot pocketed come back to the centre, along with one you had already pocketed. The red queen can go down at any time, but it must be covered: pocket one of your own pieces with the same shot or the next, or the queen goes back to the centre. And nobody may pocket their last piece while the queen is still uncovered.

Clear all nine of your pieces with the queen covered and the board is yours. Every board you win brings a sharper club player: Rookie Ravi misses plenty, Steady Sam and Quick Kiran pocket runs of pieces, and the players at the top of the ladder rarely miss a clear pot. Lose a board and the run is over. Your score counts boards won (worth more higher up the ladder), every piece you pocket, the queens you cover, the opponent's pieces still on the board when you win and a quick-finish bonus for clearing in few shots. Every ranked run is verified by replaying it on our servers, so the leaderboards of our competitive games are fair.

While you pull back, a long aim line shows the direction the striker will leave in, and the arrow and the ring round the striker show the power. Nothing shows where the striker will meet a piece or where that piece will go: judging the contact, the cut and the rebound off a cushion is the skill, just as on a real board. As the official laws of carrom allow, you can shoot in any direction, even backwards at a piece sitting behind your baseline, and the CPU players can too. Soft shots keep the striker from following a piece into the pocket; a hard break spreads the formation across the board. A quick Quick Board round also plays in the Daily and in Swipe mode: every piece is yours, and you pocket as many as you can in under two minutes, with doubles and runs of pockets scoring extra.

On a touch screen, drag the slider bar under the board to move the striker, then press on the striker and pull back away from where you want it to go; let go to shoot. With a mouse it works the same way, the arrow keys (or A and D) slide the striker and P pauses. It is a relaxed game of skill among our casual games for adults, a classic from homes and clubs across South Asia brought to your browser.