I discovered this little gem while searching the internets for more details regarding Danish Pin Billiards.

Among other things I discovered that another word used for pin billiards is "skittles", presumably named after the lawn bowling pins bearing the same name.

Anyway, a game that caught my eye seems to be a half-way thing between Snooker and Danish Pins. It's referred to as "Canadian Skittles" and doesn't have a Wikipedia entry for me to refer back to. The lack of such a centralised resource was actually the main motivation to create this blog!

Anyway, on with the game explanation.

From my limited research, I can see that the game comes in a number of different variants. The most notable three differ in the number of black pins used.

This writeup will introduce you to the 1, 2, and 3 black pin variants of the game. The rules shouldn't differ too signficantly between versions other than initial setup.

Materials and Setup

To play this game you need the following:

A Snooker table, but a Pool table can also work
1-3 black pins (depending on variant)
4 non-black pins. This can either be 4 whites, or a yellow, green, brown, and red pin.
A white cue-ball, a yellow ball, and a red ball.

The pins are between 3" (7.62 cm) and 3.5" (8.89 cm) according to the rules I found, which is taller than Five-Pin pins (2.5 cm) and shorter than Danish Pin pins (10-12 cm).

To set up for the 1-black-pin variant, put the yellow ball on the brown Snooker spot, the red ball on the pink Snooker spot, and place the black pin on the blue Snooker spot with all the other pins surrounding the central black pin as shown below:

To set up for the 2-black-pin variant, set up exactly as before, but place the second black pin on the pink Snooker spot, then put the red ball on the black Snooker spot as seen in the diagram below:

To set up for the 3-black-pin variant, place the third black pin on the brown Snooker spot, then place the yellow ball on the yellow Snooker spot in the corner of the D, as seen in the diagram below:

As usual, please note that the diagrams are not to scale.

The placement of black pins and balls may vary from variant to variant. From placing the yellow and red balls on the black and pink spots in the 1-pin variant, to swapping the black pin and yellow ball in the 3-pin variant.

I don't think there's any official standardised set of rules for the game.
The number of black pins basically just determines the difficulty level of the game.

The Game

The object of the game is to get 31 points without going over.

An optional variant is to play the game with numbered peas (nomally used for Kelly Pool), where each player gets a secret random number from 1 to 15 which determines their starting score.

Most versions of the rules I've found also sees players play for a $10 pot with additional penalties for fouls and such. Winner collects the pot plus money for each foul made by the other players.

Structure

The game is played in innings, meaning a player's turn continues as long as they make points and don't make any fouls.

Causing a foul ends the turn immediately, see Fouls for details.

The Break

To break, the starting player places their cue ball in the D, which must then exit the baulk area/kitchen, then hit a ball. This is the same as the in-hand rules.

Note that the cue ball may hit a cushion outside the baulk area then rebound and hit a ball inside the baulk area. The point is just that it must fully exit.

Scoring Points

There are a number of ways to score points in the game, all of which come from the games that inspired it.

Pocketing the yellow ball: 2 points
Pocketing the red ball: 3 points
Losing Hazard/In-Off on the yellow: 2 points
Losing Hazard/In-Off on the red: 3 points
Carom Shot/Cannon: 2 points
Knocking over non-black pins gives the appropriate values in points, red: 1, yellow: 2, green: 3, brown: 4.
Knocking over a black pin gives 5 points.

Pins can be knocked over by any ball, as long as the cue-ball has made contact with another ball first.

A Losing Hazard or In-Off is a shot where the cue-ball is pocketed after hitting another ball. A Carom shot/Cannon is when the cue-ball hits both the other two balls.

All Losing Hazards give the player ball in hand.

Additionally there are three ways to get an instant win:

Royal: Knocking down all the non-black pins by themselves. This is also knowns as a sweep.
Natural: Knocking down all the black pins by themselves (not available in the 1-black-pin variant)
Pocketing all three balls in the same shot (according to one rule-set)

Re-Spotting

Any pocketed balls and knocked over pins get re-spotted to their starting points as necessary. A pocketed cue-ball gets "re-spotted" in-hand within the D and must then be shot with the normal break rules.

Fouls

When a foul occurs, the foul is marked with an X on the scoreboard and the player's score resets down to zero.

Knock over both black and non-black pins.
Score on the same type of shot three times in a row.
Cue-ball doesn't hit any other balls.
Cue-ball hits the pins before hitting a ball.
Cue-ball gets pocketed without hitting a ball.
Cue-ball fails to make contact with a ball outside the baulk area when in-hand.
Active player exceeds the target score.
Active player achieves target score without knocking over any pins.
Pins or balls get knocked off the table.
Knock or move something in other ways than intended through normal play. i.e. with a sleeve or the side of the cue etc.

Winnings

As mentioned, the winning player wins the pot + the value for any X's the other players made in fouls.

If you aren't playing for money, call these victory points or game points instead.

Sources

As mentioned, this game didn't have one de-facto source for rules, so I had to source them from a few different places:

The Blog of Esoteric Cue Sports

Pages

Wednesday 29 November 2023

Canadian Skittles