The Addictive Fun of Playing Crokinole
Crokinole is a fun board game with apparent origins in Canada. It feels like a combination of shuffleboard and curling all shrunk down to table top size.
You can play Crokinole with 2, 3, or 4 players. If you play against just one person, you sit on opposite sides of the board. If you play with a total of 4 players, you form teams with your partner who sits across from you.
Crokinole with 3 players is played 2 vs 1. The solo player shoots all 12 disks in between shots by his opponents who each shoot 6 disks.
The goal in Crokinole is to get your disk to land in the center hole. That scores 20 points. If you fail to hit the center, you want to be as close to it as possible. At the end of a round, disks wholly within the inner ring are worth 15 points. Stay inside the middle ring to score 10 points. Disks in the outer ring score 5 each. If a disk is on the outer line of any ring, it is counted as being in that outermost ring of the two. Thus if it’s on the largest line next to the edge of the board, it scores nothing and is immediately removed from play.
When it’s your turn to flick a Crokinole disk and there are no disks of the opposing color on the board, you must land your disk either in the center hole or the 15-point ring. Failing that, your disk and any it touched are removed from the game (for the round).
When it’s your turn and there are opposing disks on the board, you must hit at least one of them before anything else. Failing that, your disk is removed.
When all disks have been flicked, you count points. The player (or team) with the most points scores the difference between that high score and your opponent’s score. The winner of a game of Crokinole is the first one to 100 (or more) points.
Crokinole can be very addictive. It’s one of those board games where you feel you can always do better the next time and often want to try right then and there.
Check the price of Crokinole boards on Amazon.