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Let's Talk: Parlour Games

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31 Jan 2016 10:08 #221171 by ChristopherMD
How do you feel about them? What ones do you play even though you have "modern" board games competing for table space?

Crokinole definitely seems to fit here. I never liked Chess. It seems like nobody I game with wants to play regular card games. I miss playing Spades and Forty-Fives regularly. I have a gaming friend who is a big Mah-Jong fan. I have a set for it somewhere, but never play it.

Do you think most abstract games fall into this category (like the GIPF games) or is there some special quality they need?

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31 Jan 2016 12:53 #221188 by OldHippy
Replied by OldHippy on topic Let's Talk: Parlour Games
I love Parlous Games.

See where I grew up, in Manitouwadge, there was no game store. The closest city, Thunder Bay (6 hour drive), only had a shitty selection and then it was a 14 hour drive to Toronto. That was the only place to really buy games outside of the popular stuff. But Parlour Games... those were actually around. Shuffle Board, darts, Crokinole, backgammon... were set up all over the place so I had early exposure to those games. We had a pool table and a dart board at home, my old man loved both. I was super heavy into darts for a few years, I had three personalized sets of darts, two special boards. I don't have any of that stuff now unfortunately, it's all at my old mans place and I have no where to set it up here anyway. But I still have my Carrom board which I love.

Carrom and Crokinole get compared all the time. Some people will even act like one of them is amazing and the other sucks... which is nuts, they're not that different really. I usually say Crokinole is billiards to Carrom's Snooker. They have their place. Both are awesome and I play both regularly, although it usually takes me 30-45 minutes or so to get my skills back.

I never really thought of Chess as being a parlour game.. perhaps it is. I used to love chess. I had a great Radio Shack electronic chess board that would kick your ass. It had ten difficulty settings and I only needed the first five. They got crazy hard after that and the highest level would beat me in very few moves. It was a kick ass board. I also played Checkers, Chinese checkers, cribbage was huge in our house, a couple of bridge addicts in the house too (that game is hard and easily as strategic as any card game since) and we played Mah Jong as a family too.

These days I still love all that stuff. Give me a deck of cards and a dart board and I'd be a happy camper.

I think the GIPF games can serve a similar purpose. I've played YINSH, ZERTZ (my favourite one of them) and DEVONN with non gamers and it worked well every time. Hive went over well too and could probably fall into the same category.

Thinking about this makes me want to set my dart board back up... I'm sure I could find somewhere... perhaps the garage... hmmm. Time to talk to my wife.
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31 Jan 2016 12:54 #221189 by Jexik
Replied by Jexik on topic Let's Talk: Parlour Games
I like Hearts, and my family used to play a ton of Pinochle, but I don't think I've played either in years. I would if asked.
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31 Jan 2016 15:23 #221197 by wadenels
Replied by wadenels on topic Let's Talk: Parlour Games
We still play a lot of Pinochle, and Rook and Canasta make the rotation too. It's what the adults in my family played when we were kids, and so eventually we ended up playing them too. If I had tracked game plays since childhood Pinochle would be #1 by an order of magnitude at minimum. We used to play a lot of Sequence and some Five Straight with my grandparents, and I think they qualify as parlour games as well.

An afternoon/evening with Crokinole, Canasta, Pinochle and the like can be a lot of fun. It's a different experience than playing a hobby game because when we play games that I'd consider to be in the parlour games category the game isn't really the focus. It's about playing an activity together and socializing in an environment where you don't have 6 card decks, 100 cubes or minis, 9 moving parts, and "clever" interactions.
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31 Jan 2016 23:47 #221223 by the_jake_1973
I would always play Cribbage and Backgammon with relatives visiting from England. I learned to count my Cribbage points quickly under the gruff tutelage of my great-uncle. We play Euchre at work quite a bit, although I prefer Spades more. Dominoes is a nice and rowdy game with the right players. Until I was in the Army, I didn't even know there was a properly scored game using dominoes.

Although these games are simple in components, I would put them above many of the games that are considered hobby games. These parlour games are elegant and distilled. There isn't the theme that defines hobby games, but that doesn't lessen their depth or strategic play.

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01 Feb 2016 08:26 - 01 Feb 2016 08:27 #221229 by SuperflyPete
Crokinole, shuffleboard, and pool. I don't have access to shuffleboard (although I know a restorer...) but we play Crok a lot, and I play pool every weekend. I'm continually tempted to sell my board games off and just buy a pool table with the proceeds. Honestly, there's very few games I'd play over playing pool.

We used to have these friends who have a bar in their basement and we'd play all kinds of "parlour games", like Euchre, and games like LCR, "Screw Your Neighbor", etc. For whatever reason, they kind of went a different direction, so we don't hang with them anymore.
Last edit: 01 Feb 2016 08:27 by SuperflyPete.
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01 Feb 2016 08:39 #221231 by SuperFlySwatter
so weird you should say that pete because I pulled out the Carrom board the other night and was underwhelmed. Been playing pool on the shitty ipad app, Im way out of practice with Carrom but Ive Heard people say Before its Closer to pool and theyd rather play that. And for the first time I really felt fuck this, I'd like to sell this and save up for a smallish pool table instead.

Though in reality I'll sell it to buy more Heroscape and then still buy a pool table later

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01 Feb 2016 09:27 #221239 by SuperFlySwatter

Mad Dog wrote: How do you feel about them? What ones do you play even though you have "modern" board games competing for table space?

Crokinole definitely seems to fit here. I never liked Chess. It seems like nobody I game with wants to play regular card games. I miss playing Spades and Forty-Fives regularly. I have a gaming friend who is a big Mah-Jong fan. I have a set for it somewhere, but never play it.

Do you think most abstract games fall into this category (like the GIPF games) or is there some special quality they need?


good post. I never saw the Point of Crokinole when I liked Carrom, but now I seem to have gone off Carrom and would prefer pool, I still dont really get the appeal of Crokinole to be honest, it just seems really boring

I liked chess as a kid but later on backgammon was more popular, of course its no good without the cube, but people get confused about that and start prattling on about "gambling", but really the cube is there to add an extremely high level evaluation of the position into being able to play matches to a number of Points, its kind of like poker in that a single hand of poker, even though skill matters can be more influenced by luck (the cards), but over a day of a tournament, a professional is going to kick your ass pretty much every single time, because not only are they Reading your tells, pyschology and patterns, but they are expertly calculating the average returns of each bet, and in the long run that wins, every time. Same with backgammon, you need to know how to offer the cube in a position where the opponent has a chance to win, youre trying to game the E(V) in a way to earn more Points on average. But to do it properly requires a lot of skill, I wish I had it, because I find otherwise single games or best of Three or five a bit unfulfilling. I Think playing to a match score of a higher number and throwing the cube in there adds a lot of extra to it

I admire chess but fuck if I have the time, interest or energy to study it enough to get past the feeling that every game I play is decided by who makes the most and/or biggest fuckups.

cards, poker is still awesome with a full table, also played a lot of crib but to be honest, so much of that game is auto pilot playing its hard not see that as just a pleasant time passer.

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01 Feb 2016 09:46 #221242 by the_jake_1973
Backgammon is total pants without the use of the cube. And as part of a series of games like you said. Single games, even with the cube, are meh.

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01 Feb 2016 09:56 #221246 by SuperflyPete
Lala: Carrom can be played with or without the cue, and I prefer without. Flicking games are flicking games, pool is pool. There should be no crossover. ;)

Honestly, I've been playing pool every week (used to be every day) for 15 years and there's no peer. Either you're a pool player or you're not. What I love about pool is that anyone can play it, and most people aren't opposed to it. If I break out a copy of Eldritch Horror people look at me like I'm wearing a cape and fishnet gloves, with elf ears. When I play pool, I'm just playing pool. They're both highly cerebral games, but only one of the two is widely accepted as a valid pastime. Really fucking weird.

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01 Feb 2016 11:43 #221267 by SuperFlySwatter
ha!
Carrom is never played with a cue, thats American Carrom :)

I can see what people mean with Carrom vs pool They are talking about the concept of shots of one object onto Another and into a pocket, and thinking about the next shot. Well, I'm sure some people see the cue in American Carrom and Think pool, but the specific dudes I discussed Carrom with were basically saying they liked Crokinole to flick but if they were going to play a game of Carrom theyd Always prefer pool.

I'm definitely looking into buying a pool table this year.

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01 Feb 2016 11:51 #221269 by SuperFlySwatter

the_jake_1973 wrote: Backgammon is total pants without the use of the cube. And as part of a series of games like you said. Single games, even with the cube, are meh.


agreed, whats weird is its a fairly common response
"we dont play with the cube as we hate gambling"
what the fuck? Apart from it being a totally weird and wrong understanding of what the cube is and does, it seem some people are uptight about this

A well known boardgame commenter, I wont name names, but he wrote some stuff about Acquire amongst other things and it was pretty obvious this guy needed to play Lords of Vegas, which was basically fitting his described parameters for perfect game pretty much, when I told him about he said hed avoided it because he doesnt care for the Las Vegas and gambling thing. I was pretty flabbergasted, but heck, different strokes and all that. This was on the same site where Another well known commenter, a guy who did the art I Think on one of the top rated boardgames in the World (not just BGG; I'm sure people here like it too) rated Twilight Struggle a 5 and he was glad Pandemic Legacy toppled it at BGG.,

His logic? Him and his wife hated games where you had to be mean, and the entire game was just being mean to each other so they quit after a few turns. Now, why the fuck you would go to the trouble of setting TS up, and not realise beforehand how the game works, a 2P confrontational game thats often argued about as to whether it is indeed an actual wargame, and its touted as being long (his other complaint was it seemed to take a long time), how you would ever Think that would work for you and your wife, but then to feel like after that half game experience you should feel qualified to not only rate the game, but then give it a 5, and then talk about it on an actual "opinionated" website about games, well it didnt make any sense to me. Especially because the game he helped illustrate is one where any posts on the BGG forum for it that in any way insinuate that there is anything wrong with it AT ALL for any player, is immediately drowned by the fanboys (and designer sometimes) in being summarily dismissed as a blithering idiot, you know, because "they must not get it".

Sorry this has fuck all to do with the thread.

So yeah, backgammon good, but absolutely needs "match rules" with the cube. Gambling is NOT required and is a separate option, just like you can gamble on any game. If you want.

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01 Feb 2016 12:08 #221271 by SuperflyPete

lala wrote: ha!
Carrom is never played with a cue, thats American Carrom :)

I can see what people mean with Carrom vs pool They are talking about the concept of shots of one object onto Another and into a pocket, and thinking about the next shot. Well, I'm sure some people see the cue in American Carrom and Think pool, but the specific dudes I discussed Carrom with were basically saying they liked Crokinole to flick but if they were going to play a game of Carrom theyd Always prefer pool.

I'm definitely looking into buying a pool table this year.


Actually, Eastern Europe has been playing with cues for a lot longer. Novuss, et al. More ironic yet, I learned Carrom from my bestie in High School, one Rajeev Ghia, who learned from his father and played with a cue. I've actually never seen the cue used except at his house...everywhere else it's finger flickin' good.

Check Craigslist - people give them away all the time, and getting the table re-felted is like 150$ for Simonis cloth, which is the only cloth I'd ever put on a table at this point. At this point I'm considering converting part of my house into a bar.

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01 Feb 2016 12:30 - 01 Feb 2016 12:36 #221278 by OldHippy
Replied by OldHippy on topic Let's Talk: Parlour Games
Carrom with a cue is generaly considered to be Chinese Carrom from what I've read.





Either way I've never played it that way. I also play the variant where you cannot flick backwards. If a piece is behind the shooting line you must still shoot forwards and try to work a bank shot into your system. It does make the game harder but everyone gets much better at bank shots eventually.

I compare Carrom with Snooker and Crokinole with Billiards because of the feel of them, not simply because you put things in pockets by making that extra connection... because you don't do that in Crokinole. But Crokinole feels easier, it's a simpler game that is more casual while Carrom can be brutally fucking hard and takes a lot longer to play properly - there's also the role of the red piece that feels much more snooker like. I think they serve similar purposes though. Crokinole for more casual drinking nights and Carrom for more serious competition. I'd probably rather have a pool table but they have too big a foot print so it's just not likely - actually I'd probably rather have both, I can't imagine not being able to play Crokinole or Carrom anymore. I can pack up my Crokinole and Carrom boards and take them to a buddies house... try that with Billiards.
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01 Feb 2016 12:45 #221280 by SuperflyPete
That's kind of why the Circus died a slow death - my buddy can't sit for long periods anymore, but we can play pool for 12 hours straight.

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