How to Play Carrom: Rules, Board Setup and Tips
Picture pool without a cue: you flick a heavy disc across a polished square board and send smaller discs into the corner pockets. That is the carrom board game, a tabletop classic from India that clubs and cafés across South Asia still run tournaments for. This guide covers the board, the setup, how a turn works, covering the red queen, fouls and scoring, plus tips for your first games.
Key takeaways
- Carrom is played on a square board with a pocket in each corner, using 9 white coins, 9 black coins, a red queen and a heavier striker.
- You shoot the striker from your baseline, and every coin of your colour you pocket earns you another shot.
- The queen must be covered: after pocketing it, you must pocket one of your own coins, or the queen goes back to the centre.
- Pocketing the striker is a foul that costs you one of your pocketed coins.
- In the common points game, the board winner scores one point per opponent coin left, plus 3 for a covered queen, and the first player to 25 wins.
What you need
The carrom board game needs only a board and 20 pieces, but the details matter. According to Wikipedia’s carrom article, the International Carrom Federation (ICF) specifies a square playing surface between 73.5 and 74 centimeters on each side, usually made of plywood and framed by wooden borders. Each corner has a pocket with a net underneath that can hold at least 10 pieces.
The pieces are:
- Carrom men: 9 white and 9 black. They are also called coins, pucks, seeds or pawns. ICF-approved men measure 3.02 to 3.18 cm across, 7 to 9 mm thick, and weigh 5.0 to 5.5 grams.
- The queen: one red piece, the most valuable on the board.
- The striker: a larger, heavier disc that you flick to move everything else. A standard striker weighs about 15 grams and measures 4.1 cm across.
On a traditional board the pockets are only slightly wider than a carrom man and narrower than the striker. Beginner boards have bigger pockets, which is why the striker can fall in, and why there is a rule for it.
Players also dust the board with a fine powder so the pieces glide. Boric acid powder is the most common choice, and some UK players use a vegetable-starch spray powder instead.
Board markings
A carrom board looks busy, but each line has a job:
- Baselines: each side of the board has a pair of parallel lines with a circle at each end. This is where you place the striker before every shot.
- Diagonal arrow lines: four lines run from the corners toward the center. Under professional rules, the striker may not touch them when you place it.
- The center circle: the queen starts here, and an uncovered queen comes back here.
Setting up the board
The red queen starts in the middle of the center circle, with the 18 carrom men grouped around it, whites and blacks mixed together. In a two-player game, the players sit on opposite sides of the board, each behind their own baseline.
Wikipedia lists carrom as a game for 2 to 4 players. The most common setup, and the one this guide follows, is one player against another with one colour each.
The toss and the break
In tournament play, an umpire hides one black and one white man, one in each hand, and a player guesses which hand holds which colour. A correct guess wins the toss. The winner strikes first, which is called the opening break. They may instead swap colours and give up the break. The player who breaks always plays white.
How to play carrom: a turn
Every shot follows the same steps:
- Place the striker. Put it on your baseline. Under professional rules, it must touch both baseline lines, and it must either cover an end circle completely or not touch it at all.
- Aim. Line up the striker with the coin you want to hit and the pocket you want it in.
- Flick. Strike the striker with a finger. The ICF allows any finger, including the thumb, so “thumbing” is legal.
If you pocket a coin of your own colour, you shoot again. If nothing of yours goes in, the turn passes to your opponent. Under professional rules, sinking your opponent’s piece ends your turn.
One limit catches many beginners. You can’t strike a carrom man directly if it is touching your baseline or sitting behind it. To move it, you have to bank the striker off a side of the board or knock another piece into it.
Professional rules also give you three tries to get the striker off your baselines. After three tries without leaving the lines, you lose your turn.
The queen and covering
The queen is where most of the carrom rules get interesting. Pocketing it is not enough on its own. You have to cover it by pocketing one of your own carrom men after it.
- Pocket the queen, and you get another shot, as with any successful pot.
- Pocket one of your own coins on that next shot and the queen is covered. It now belongs to you.
- Miss the cover, and the queen goes back to the center of the board.
Rule sets disagree about pocketing the queen and your own coin on the same shot. Wikipedia’s general rules section says the queen is covered automatically in that case, no matter which went in first. Its professional rules say the queen and its cover can’t be pocketed in the same strike. Agree on this before you start.
You also can’t save the queen for last. The queen must always be covered, so it is illegal to pocket the queen after your last piece. Under professional rules, sinking your last piece before the queen loses you the board.
Fouls and dues
The most common foul is pocketing the striker. When it happens, you return one of your pocketed men to the board, and your turn ends. If you haven’t pocketed any men yet, you owe one. This debt is called a due, and you pay it when you pocket your next coin.
Crossing the diagonal lines is also a foul with the same penalty. In games scored by points rather than boards, the penalty for pocketing the striker is usually 10 points.
Carrom scoring
A game of carrom is played over several boards. You win a board by pocketing all nine of your carrom men, after the queen has been covered. How you score depends on the format.
Professional and points scoring
| Situation | Points |
|---|---|
| Each opponent man left on the board | 1 point to the board winner |
| Queen covered by the board winner | 3 points (none once your score reaches 21) |
| Game target | 25 points |
For example, say you clear your last white man while your opponent still has four blacks on the board, and you covered the queen earlier. You score 4 + 3 = 7 points for the board. If your opponent had covered the queen, you would score only the 4.
Professional rules add a few penalties. Sinking your opponent’s last piece loses you the board and costs 3 points. Sinking your own last piece before the queen loses the board, costs 3 points, and gives your opponent one point for each of your pieces left.
Other scoring systems
- Point carrom: every carrom man is worth 1 point and the queen 3, and the first player to 25 wins. Wikipedia describes it as a format for children or an odd number of players.
- Family-point: black men are worth 10, white men 20 and the queen 50.
- Total-point: players compete for all the men across rounds. Values vary, with black at 1, 5 or 10, white at 2, 10 or 20, and the queen at 5 or 50.
A short history
Carrom comes from India. Wikipedia notes that serious tournaments may have started in Sri Lanka in 1935, and that India and Sri Lanka had official federations by 1958. The International Carrom Federation was formed in 1988 in Chennai, India, the same year India’s formal rules were published. National federations followed elsewhere, including the UK in 1991, Italy in 1995 and Pakistan in 2004.
Strategy tips
Move along the baseline before you aim. Sliding the striker to line up a straight shot is easier than cutting a coin at a sharp angle.
Control your power. Coins glide a long way on a powdered board. The striker is roughly three times heavier than a coin, so on a full hit it keeps rolling after the coin. Hit too hard toward a pocket and the striker can follow the coin in for a foul.
Plan the queen. Go for the queen when you already have an easy cover lined up. Pocketing it without a follow-up shot just puts it back in the middle for your opponent.
Use the sides. Coins behind your baseline can’t be hit directly, so practice banking the striker off the frame.
Play carrom online
You don’t need a real carrom board game set to learn. Our free carrom game runs in your browser, with no download, against an Easy, Medium or Hard computer, or 2 players on one device. You slide the striker along your baseline, pull back to shoot and race to 25 points. It follows the core rules above: your own coin earns another shot, the queen must be covered, a pocketed striker costs you a coin, and the board winner scores the coins your opponent has left plus 3 for a covered queen.
If you like flicking balls into pockets, our 8 Ball Pool game uses the same aim-and-pull-back controls on a pool table.
Frequently asked questions
How many coins are there in carrom?
A carrom set has 19 pieces plus the striker: 9 white men, 9 black men and 1 red queen. Each player pockets one colour, and the queen is a bonus piece that must be covered.
What happens if you pocket the striker in carrom?
It’s a foul. You return one of your pocketed men to the board, and your turn ends. If you haven’t pocketed any yet, you owe one, called a due, and pay it with your next pocketed coin.
How many points is the queen worth in carrom?
In the standard points game, the queen is worth 3 points to the player who covered it, but only if that player wins the board. Under professional rules, you stop collecting queen points once your score reaches 21. Family-point games value it at 50, and total-point games at 5 or 50.
What is the size of a carrom board?
The ICF specifies a square playing surface between 73.5 and 74 cm on each side, or about 29 by 29 inches for a tournament board. The border frame adds another 5 to 10 cm on each side.
Who goes first in carrom?
The winner of the toss takes the opening break, or may swap colours and let the opponent break. Whoever breaks plays white.
Conclusion
Carrom’s rules fit on a page: pocket your colour, cover the queen, keep the striker out of the pockets, and clear your coins first. Learn the cover rule and baseline placement and you can play a full game to 25 tonight. For a quick break between boards, the Chrome Dino runner on our homepage is one tap away.
