Olde Worlde fun (Bar Billiards)

Member Name: Boonoiy

Product:	Bar Billiards
Date:	20/02/02 (163 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Involves as many as you want, Easy to pick up and play, Not expensive

Disadvantages: Lasts a while so queues can develop

The game of Bar Billiards - not the most well known or most popular games in the pub, in fact, nowadays yopu're hard pushed to find a table. For those that have had the pleasure of this game it leaves a trail through their hearts, it's challenging, amusing, can accomodate as many players as you wish to have involved without breaking the rules of play so it is not at all exclusive and it is very entertaining. So, after my ravings yesterday about the way to write the perfect op (hah!) we'll try to practice what we preach shall we?

The table:
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Easilly recognisable in the pub, it's similar in appearance to a pool or snooker table from a distance but quite a bit smaller - as you get a little closer you'll noitice that the table is on a slant and the pockets (more like holes in the table really) are not in the corners and either side! They're all over the place - along the top there's 5 pockets, marked 10, 20, 30, 20, 10 - in that order, moving down you've got a 100 pocket directly in line with the 30, 2 50 pockets which are level with, well, I think the easiest way to put it would be the area between the 10 and 20 pockets along the top and finally there's the magnificent 200 pocket nearest to you, again in line with the 30. Hope that doesn't sound too garbled!

The next point of note is the presence of 3 pins on the table - very important to the rules of play and make a huge impact on scoring! 2 white pins go on spots (same kind as you get on a pool table to show where the black ball goes) near the top of the table and a black pin goes on a spot directly in front of the 200 hole. A further spot is about 3 inches in front of this and we're about ready to talk rules:

Rules of play:
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Bar Billiards is a game of plants - you can only score points from playing one ball off another i.e the one you've played with the cue (cue's exactly the same as
snooker or pool) or the one you've played scores if its playes off another.

Scoring is done by getting a ball down a hole and claiming the points indicated.

To Start - The spot in front of the black pin is occupied by the only coloured ball in the game, you've got 1 red ball and the rest are white - using one of the white balls, play the red up the table and try to get it in the hole. Red scores double the points indicated over the pockets, white scores single.

All very easy, play until you miss scoring and then move on to the next player - this goes on until the timer runs out and all the balls are gone - highest score wins!

Pins! Ha, told you these were important! The difference between white and black is very important, the pins wipe you out but if you knock down a white pin you simply lose the points accumulated on the break, with the black one you lose all points from the entire game! This makes going for the 200 pocket a bit tricky as you need to come off at least one side to get to it - this is very easy to get wrong and only the brave atempt this.

As you pot balls they roll back down to you and land in a little tray to be played again, the bar part of the game's name comes into effect once your time has run out - the bar stops the balls coming back and you have to build up as many points as possible with what's left - as you're still playing plants you'll need to take the nearest ball to you bacvk to the start to be able to play and you are very ,likely to be left with only one ball! Now you need to get this in to the 200 pocket by playing it out from the start - the 2 50 holes are closed by putting the white pins in to stop you losing the ball in either of these but the black remains where it was - this means that you must be very precise in your shot to win.

My opinion of the game:
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Well it's great, it's easy to pick up and play
, you'll usually pay about a pound and the timer lasts about 20 minutes - much longer than most of my pool games! As it allows a lot of players you can get really involved in the game, with practice you can get really good scores and, if you play towards the top of the table you stand a good chance of getting a ball in each time - bad luck seems to be the one thing which'll send the pins falling, nobody plays for them so I suppose this is an obvious statement - a bad bounce is all it takes to lose your score.

A good old fashioned game, you'll be hooked as I was when I first discovered it. Unfortunately the pub I used to play in has been refurbiched and is now full of trendy drinks and trendy wood burning stove baked pizzas and I'm a little bereft of tables in my locality!

Fun, easy to learn and a game for all to enjoy - you don't even need to be very skillful to play and win if you get the roll of the balls. Drink, play and enjoy!

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