Why trick shots?

Carrom is a flicking game. You sit at a square wooden board, flick a heavy disc called the striker, and knock lighter coins into the four corner pockets. A full game starts with 19 coins packed in the middle, and the first few strikes can feel like luck.

Carrom Flick starts smaller. Each trick shot puts a few coins on the board and asks you to sink them in as few strikes as you can. First one coin and a straight line, then the red queen, then coins you can only reach off the wooden edges. Every level has a solution that we checked with the same physics you play with. When you want the real thing, the 2 player mode sets up a full board.

A bit of real carrom history

Nobody knows exactly where or when carrom began. Most histories trace it to India, and it is most popular across South Asia. It is also played through the Middle East and as far east as China, Malaysia and Indonesia.

International rules came in October 1988, when the International Carrom Federation was formed in Madras, now Chennai, in India. Delegates came from India, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Malaysia, Germany and Switzerland. The first world championship followed in 1991.

A tournament board has a playing surface 74 cm square. A set has 9 white coins, 9 black coins and one red queen. The striker is bigger than a coin and about three times as heavy, which is why it can send a coin flying and keep on rolling. A full game runs to 25 points.

Singapore has its own club. The Association of Carrom Singapore was set up in 2020, and at the 7th Carrom World Cup in the Maldives in 2025 two of its players won bronze in the men’s doubles. It was Singapore’s first medal at the event.

How to play

• Slide the striker along your baseline. Drag it, tap the line, or use the slider under the board.
• Pull back from the striker like a slingshot and let go. The further you pull, the harder the strike. The meter on the right shows the power.
• The striker only goes forward, away from you. The dotted line shows its path. In the later levels the line gets shorter.
• Trick shots: sink every white coin, and the red queen when there is one, within the strike limit. If the striker or a black coin goes in, that strike is undone but still counts.
• The queen has to be covered. Sink a white on the same strike or the next one, or she goes back to the middle. Your last white can’t go in before her.
• Stars: 3 for par, 2 for one strike over par, 1 for finishing. The hint button shows a shot that works. A level finished with a hint gets up to 2 stars.
• 2 players: white plays from the bottom, black from the top. Sink one of your own coins and you go again. A coin of the other color counts for them.
• Sinking the striker is a foul. Your turn ends and one of your sunk coins goes back to the middle. A color’s last coin can’t go in before the queen is covered either. If it does, it comes back out.
• The first side to sink all 9 coins, once the queen is covered, wins the board. The winner scores 1 point for each coin the other side has left, plus 3 for the queen if they covered her. No one to play? Pick the computer.
• On a keyboard, the arrow keys move the striker, A and D turn it, W and S set the power, and Space strikes. Hold Shift for small steps.
• Sound is on to start. Tap 🔊 to mute, or 🎵 for music.
• Earn 3 stickers in this game for your QuickBOP sticker book.

Aiming tips

Hit the far side of the coin. Picture a line from the pocket through the coin and out the other side. Send the striker along that line so it touches the coin on the side away from the pocket. In the first levels a pink line shows where the coin will go.

Thin cuts need more power. If the striker only clips the edge of a coin, most of the speed stays with the striker. Hit harder for a thin cut, and softer when you hit a coin full on.

Use the edges. A coin behind your baseline needs a bounce. The wooden edge soaks up some of the speed, so the striker comes off flatter than a mirror bounce. Aim at a spot on the edge a little nearer to you than you would for a perfect mirror.

Soft is safer. A coin close to a pocket only needs a gentle strike. Hit too hard and the striker can follow the coin in, which is a foul. Before you let go, follow the line past the first coin and check where a black coin could end up.

Your turn

The striker is waiting on the baseline at the top of this page. Start with one white coin and a straight line, and see how many of the 40 trick shots you can sink in par.