Traditional Indian board games for the bored
Indian families favored these three games twentieth century – Chess, Carroms, and Chinese Checkers
Growing up as an Indian school student in the seventies and eighties of the last century, I spent my summer holidays playing three popular board games of that time: Chess, Carroms, and Chinese Checkers. We would spend hours playing these games with their infinite possibilities, and though we played them daily over months, we never tired of them as each game would be unique.
All three board games, Chess, Carroms, and Chinese Checkers, do not need any electric power or special equipment. People of any age can play them anywhere, and like you would have seen in media, even at pandemic quarantine centers! As the COVID-19 pandemic restricts outdoor movement, it is not a day too early to suggest India’s popular board games. Below is a brief description of each game.
Chess: Among the three games we have described, Chess is the most complex one and a high-profile sport. The current version of Chess we see is one that Europeans developed six centuries ago from similar traditional games from India and Persia. Ancient India had the Chaturanga, which is one of the ancestors of modern Chess.
You can play Chess on a board or the computer, and it was one of the early digital games during the advancement of computers. The IBM company’s Deep Blue computer can defeat the best human chess players or champions.
With each of the two players having sixteen chessmen to move on the board’s sixty-four squares, Chess may seem a simple game but is among the most complex as it allows infinite variations. The object of a chess game is for the player to checkmate the opponent’s King and defeat the opposite side. Alternately, chess games can also end in a draw with no side the victor.
As chess games involve strategy and multiple possibilities, they are most suitable for play. Though professional Chess has time limits for moves, they can go on over many hours.
Carroms: Carrom is an Indian game popular across South Asia and some other parts of the globe. Carrom gained popularity about a century ago after the first World War. People in India’s neighbors Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and the Maldives also like carroms. In the middle east, people in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain are also like playing carroms. In addition, Indians emigrating to Australia, the UK, Europe, and North American popularised carrom to their new country.
Plywood carrom boards are seventy-four-centimeter square and have pouches or nets at the four corners to collect the coins. Plastic or wooden carrom men are the game’s parts, with nine black, nine white, and one red queen making up the set of nineteen on each board.
Carrom men have other names, including coins, seeds, pucks, and pawns.
The objective in a carrom game is for a player to use the striker to send the carrom men into the pouch. Boric powder smoothens a carrom board and games on it. With just four components, the board, the carrom men, the striker, and boric powder, carrom is a game with the least requirements.
People play carrom on the floor or raised surfaces.
Carrom is a fast-paced game with the champion players sometimes finishing the game in one strike. In professional games, you can find lights over the board to illuminate it and to prevent moisture on it, which can lead to sticky powder. Professional games of two-player pairs are interesting, with the members of one team having to guess the other’s mind as the match disallows talking. The game rules are so strict that there are many ways a player can commit and foul and lose a turn or point.
Though carrom is a game of great skill and strategy, it is also suitable for families. Though the professional game has strict rules which make skill important, some variants allow for easier play. Carrom may see an enormous surge of interest in it after the current pandemic.
Carrom is a game that is easy to play anywhere and requires no electricity or any special equipment. Champion players use their strikers, but apart from that, carroms equalize all players who must demonstrate skill on a square board to win the game.
Chinese Checkers: This is the simplest of the three games I have described today.
It is a German adaptation of the American game Halma which the inventors in 1892 changed to Stermhalma. Americans and Chinese call this game Chinese Checkers.
Chinese Checkers is a two-player, three-player, four-player, or six-player game that people can play individually or in teams.
The game has a hexagram or star-shaped board with the players’ objective being to move their pieces by one or multi-step moves across the board into the star corner at the opposite end. The simplicity of this game makes it suitable for even children of smaller age groups.
Chinese Checkers is also a game of strategy like Chess, and it has variants for the number of players and the rules. In the common version that Indians play, the game requires players to move their ten pieces to their home at the opposite end of the hexagram.
Players move their pieces by one move or a combination of one movement and hops over other pieces. Blocking the other player or team’s movements is also part of the Chinese Checker strategy. It is the simplest of the three board games I have described here. We had a board with Chess on one side and Chinese Checkers on the other when I played the game as a child.
The proliferation of digital devices has come in traditional Indian board games, but the current pandemic lets us explore them for pastimes. All three of the above games require skill but allow a player with any level of proficiency to play them. They offer endless entertainment as every game is unique and tests players’ skills.
You won’t regret your choice this monsoon by choosing the three Cs: Chess, Carroms, and Chinese Checkers for your leisure hours’ games.
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