Review: Danish Pin Billiards & Skomar

 Last night I had a chance to play the Danish games of "Keglebillard" and "Skomar", which I covered in a rules overview [here].

You might think perhaps it's weird I even posted a rules overview for a game I haven't had the chance to properly play, but this blog is mostly born out of a fascination for the subject matter, rather than experience.

Game 1 - Keglebillard

We started out playing "Keglebillard", regular Danish Pin Billiards, as the rules for this variant are by far the most straightforward and the least punishing.

To summarise, the only things that score points in Keglebillard is toppling pins and making carom shots on the two object balls. Fouls don't result in any penalty points, you simply don't get to retain your score for the inning.

Despite the fact that we're both complete novices to the game, I'd say it went quite well. We played a 100 point game, which took us the better part of two hours to complete. I'd chalk the length of this game up to the fact that we both had trouble making points at all, and if we did manage to make a good handful points, we'd inevitably make a foul at the end and lose it all.

Now, we both played Eight-Ball Pool a lot in our youth, a game that is notably filled to the brim with balls. Pin billiards, like many carom games, only uses a measily three balls. This, paired with the fact that there are pins in the way, means you are much more reliant on bank shots to get anything done, as you need to manoeuvre the cue-ball around the pins to hit the object ball on the other side.

If all you (like us) have ever played is Snooker or Pool, this game provides a delightful level of challenge.

My partner left me in a rather unfortunate situation...

Game 2 - Skomar

After finishing our game of Keglebillard, we moved onto Skomar. 

The game uses all the same equipment and setup as Keglebillard, but modifies the rules to make for a quicker game. Among the major rule changes are

• Penalty points awarded to the opponent when making a foul.
• Being forced to hit a cushion before hitting the pins.
  
• Changing sides between every shot.
• Being awarded points for pocketing the object ball.
• Being awarded points for getting the two object balls to make contact.

Changing sides between every shot made for a much much more interactive game.
The game went from trying to just hit the pins over and over, to playing defensively, as leaving the object ball in a good spot would make it much easier for the opponent to make points on their turn.

Fouls rewarding the opponent points also made the game a lot quicker. Mostly because we just kept fouling.

The pockets being smaller than on a Pool table also made the otherwise rather trivial task of pocketing an object ball a bit more of a challenge:

Pool table pocket on the left, Pins table pocket on the right.

The balls would often just rattle straight out instead of falling in, but this also worked to our advantage, as some trickier shots could be bounced on the corner of a pocket's cushion and out around the pins.

Due to the shorter frames of Skomar compared to Keglebillard, Skomar is usually played best-of-3 or best-of-5.

More scoring opportunities means it's easier to find something that scores points, combined with the defensive play that comes from switching sides between shots makes this a very fun and interesting game to play. I wouldn't say it's better than Keglebillard, just different. It's certainly the better spectator sport of the two.

All in all, I think everyone should try these games if given the opportunity. Finding a table outside of Denmark is going to be a struggle for most. But the same could be said for Russian Pyramid.

Drunken Cowboy

I discovered this game while trying to find videos and info on Cowboy Pool (see earlier post) when I stumbled upon a video on a game dubbed "Drunken Cowboy".

The game outlined in the video seemed like a hybrid game between Bottle Pool (see earlier post) and Cowboy Pool combining the equipment and scoring of both games.

Materials & Setup

To play Drunken Cowboy you need the following 

• A standard Pool table
• 4 standard Pool balls: the white cue-ball, the red yellow 1-ball, a red 3-ball, and an orange 5-ball.
  
• A plastic or leather (or any non-brittle material) shake bottle

The 1-ball is placed in the head spot, the 3-ball in the foot-spot, the 5-ball in the middle, and the bottle is placed neck-down between the 1 and 5 balls. On this diagram the bottle is represented with a magenta circle.

Setup on a real Pool table

The Game

The object of the game is to reach 101 points just like in Cowboy Pool, except the game additionally also adds the bottle as a way of scoring for another way of scoring 5 points. 

Differences from Cowboy Pool

There are a few major ways this game differs from Cowboy Pool (other than the bottle of course).

1. Your cue-ball must always hit a cushion in each shot. This is to prevent a player from simply camping in front of the 5-ball and getting easy 5 points in every shot.
2. The 101st point must be a losing hazard off the 1-ball on a called pocket.
   

Structure

 As with most other billiards games, the game is played in innings, where your turn keeps going as long as you make valid scoring shots.

Once you miss or foul, the turn is over and the turn passes to the other player.

The Break

To break, the starting player shoots the cue-ball from the kitchen (the area behind the 1-ball) trying to hit the 3 ball.

Scoring

There are three ways to score in Drunken Cowboy

• Pocket any one of the object balls for the printed value in points.
• Hit two object balls with the cue-ball for one point.
• Hit three object balls with the cue-ball for two points.
  
• Hit the bottle with the cue-ball after hitting an object ball for five points.

Like in Cowboy Pool, any pocketed object balls are returned to their spot on the table.

Like in Bottle Pool, the bottle is lifted back up wherever it ended up. If you are unable to lift it, the bottle is spotted back to its original position.

Unlike Cowboy Pool, any ball must hit a cushion for the shot to be valid. This as mentioned in the Differences section is simply to prevent good players from continuously pocketing the same ball over and over by simply shooting with a bit of back-spin and having the cue-ball sit perfectly for the next shot. 

Unlike Eight-Ball Pool, simply pocketing a  ball doesn't count as hitting a cushion, thus pocketing without hitting a cushion would count as a foul.

Phases

As mentioned, the object is to get to 101 points (the video says 100, but you still need the losing hazard at the end to close the game, so it's technically 101). Just like in Cowboy Pool, the way you get there is in three phases, each of which is bounded by a specific number of points.

Phase 1: 0-90 points, where all methods of scoring are legal. The 90th point must be reached exactly. Failing to do so is a foul, garnering no points for that shot.

Phase 2: 91-100 points, where only carom shots are legal (carom shots being hitting two or more balls with the cue-ball), again the 100th point must be hit exactly. Note that hitting the bottle at this stage doesn't give points!

Phase 3: the 101st point, where you must do a losing hazard (called an in-off in Snooker), a special shot from English Billiards, where you pocket the cue-ball after hitting one of the object balls.

Fouls and Penalties

Any foul immediately ends that player's turn and forfeits any and all points scored by that player in that inning.

Fouls include

• Not hitting a cushion in every shot
• Not hitting anything at all
  
• Hitting the bottle directly
• Hitting the bottle with an object ball
• "Scratching", that is pocketing the cue-ball
• Hitting the bottle with the cue
• Pocketing the bottle or knocking it off the table
  

Additionally, should a player make three consecutive fouls, they immediately lose the game.

Bottle Pool

 

Bottle Pool is a Pool variant played with three balls and a leather or plastic bottle.

The game is played similar to Cowboy Pool in that points are scored for pocketing the balls and also caroming the cue-ball off of the object balls.

Bottle Pool adds the bottle as a new scoring objective, which is scored whenever it is truck with the cue-ball with a carom shot.

To my mind, it feels a bit like a mix between Cowboy Pool and Skomar.

Materials & Setup

To play Bottle Pool you need

• A Pool Table
• 3 balls: the cue-ball, the yellow 1-ball, and the blue 2-ball.
• A plastic or leather (or any non-brittle material) shake bottle

To set up the game, place the bottle neck down on the centre spot (here represented with a magenta circle), the 1-ball against the foot-end cushion in front of the left diamond, and the 2-ball against the foot-end cushion in front of the right diamond.

Here's an image courtesy of Wikipedia to show the setup in perspective:

The Game

The aim of the game is to hit 31 points exactly.

Overshooting 31 sets your score to however many points you overshot by.
Think of it like a clock face, overshooting 12 gets you right back around.

Structure

The game, like most varieties of billiards, is played in innings. That is to say, the active player stays active as long as they make a legal scoring shot.

The Break

The cue-ball starts in the kitchen, the area behind the middle diamond at the head-end of the table. The aim is then to hit any of the two object balls

Scoring

• Pocket the 1-ball for 1 point
• Pocket the 2-ball for 2 points
• Hit both object balls with the cue ball for 1 point
• Carom the cue-ball off one or both object balls and into the bottle for 5 points
• Manage the flip the bottle upright after doing a carom shot for an automatic win

The most points you can earn in a single shot is 9 by hitting both object balls with the cue-ball, pocketing them both, and hitting the bottle.

After reaching 31 points exactly, the player must announce this out loud before the next player takes their shot or else the score is reset to 0.

After the bottle is knocked over, it is put upright as close to where it landed as possible. If it is not possible to turn the bottle upright, or if the bottle was knocked off the table, it is instead returned to the centre spot. If that spot is occupied, it instead goes to the head spot. If the head spot and centre spots are both occupied, it instead goes to the foot spot. If all three spots are occupied, the bottle remains off the table until a spot clears.

Similar to Snooker, English Billiards, and Danish Pin Billiards, any object ball potted is re-spotted to its original starting location.
In Bottle Pool however, the 1-ball is always re-spotted before the 2-ball. This matters in case any of the spots are blocked.

Fouls

Upon making a foul, the active player's inning immediately ends and they lose any and all points gained in that inning plus one.

All the things you'd expect to be a foul in standard pocket billiards is a foul here in addition to the following:

• The cue ball fails to touch an object ball.
• The cue ball touches the bottle before contacting an object ball.
• The bottle is knocked over by an object ball.
• An object ball is pocketed on the same stroke as an illegal shot.

However, it is not a foul to knock over the bottle with an object ball if an object ball was pocketed in the same shot. In that case the inning simply ends.

 

Cowboy Pool

 On my infinite research spree through the interwebs, I stumbled upon the game of Cowboy Pool on Wikipedia.

To my dismay however, I was unable to learn much more than that.
Most Google searches just came up with results of cowboy themed pool tables; not at all what I was looking for.

I also found another (arguably really cool) Pool variant of the same name, where you have to shoot the object balls at the cue ball to then pocket them. Cool, but not the game we're talking about today.

This game is supposedly based on English Billiards, but entirely playable with a standard Pool table and Pool balls.

Materials and Setup

To play this game you need the following:

• A Pool table
• Four Pool balls: 1, 3, 5, and the cue-ball
• Two players, and some cues

The game is set up as follows:

The yellow 1-ball in the table's head spot, the orange 5-ball in the middle, and the red 3-ball in the table's foot-spot.

Sidenote: I really like how the three colours make up a perfect little sunset gradient when set up like this. It's very visually appealing. Not sure if it's a total accident or not, but it works really well!

Gameplay

Despite being played with Pool equipment, the game itself couldn't be further from Pool, as it shares much of its DNA with English Billiards.

The Break

To break, the starting player fires the cue-ball from the kitchen, the area behind the table head and the head spot, with the aim of hitting the 3-ball on the other side of the table.

Failing to hit the 3-ball may cause the other player to either request a re-shot, or attempt the break themself.

Structure

Like most Billiards, the game is played in innings, where a player keeps playing as long as they make points. Players only change sides if a foul was made or the player misses their shot.

Like in Snooker, the balls are re-spotted when pocketed.

Scoring

To score you do one of the following:

• Hit two object balls with the cue-ball: 1 point
• Hit all three object balls with the cue-ball: 2 points
• Pocket the yellow 1-ball: 1 point
• Pocket the red 3-ball: 3 points
• Pocket the orange 5-ball: 5 points

Thus, the maximum numer of points scoreable in a single hit is thus 1 + 2 + 3 + 5 = 11.

The game is played to 101 points over three phases:

Phase 1: 0-90 points, where all methods of scoring are legal. The 90th point must be reached exactly. Failing to do so is a foul, garnering no points for that shot.

Phase 2: 91-100 points, where only carom shots are legal (carom shots being hitting two or more balls with the cue-ball), again the 100th point must be hit exactly.

Phase 3: the 101st point, where you must do a losing hazard, a special shot from English Billiards, where you pocket the cue-ball after hitting one of the object balls.

Fouls

A foul shot results in the player losing all the points gained for that inning, so the game becomes a balance of trying to play it safe and score points.

 The rules I've managed to track down do not explicitly mention any fouls, that said, reasonable fouls could include

• Hitting no balls at all in a stroke
  
• Hitting a ball other than the cue-ball 
• Scratching (pocketing the cue-ball), which would give the opponent ball in-hand from the kitchen
• Not hitting a cushion in the event that nothing was scored (like in Eight-Ball Pool)
  

Closing

There's very little other info about the game, but I did manage to track down this tutorial series on youtube:

 

(updated Dec 4, 2023)

 

Danish Pin Billiards: Kegler & Skomar

 Let's start this blog off with a game local to my own homeland: Denmark. Now, this game isn't esoteric within Denmark, but the wider world doesn't seem to know about it, so it bears mention.

It's a variation of the Italian game of Five-Pin Billiards, but aside from sharing the basic features of using three balls and five pins has basically nothing else in common.

Calling this one game is technically untrue, it's two. Both are played with the same exact equipment and setup, but the rules are quite different, the first one is simply called "keglebillard" or "kegler" (meaning "pin billiards" and "pins" respectively), and the other is called "skomager" or "skomar" (meaning "shoemaker")

Equipment

• A(n ideally heated) billiards table with six pockets roughly the same size as a standard Pool table. albeit with smaller pockets.
  
• 3 standard 61.5mm Carom balls 1 white, 1 spotted white, 1 red
• 5 wooden pins 12cm tall, which look like miniature bowling pins.

The setup should look something like this: (scale not exact) 

 

 You can see a real life photo here: (courtesy of Wikipedia)

Though that table is red with a yellow ball, the standard is teal with a red ball.

Kegler

Kegler is the most basic version with the simplest rules:

The game is played in a series of innings that only end once a player either misses or fouls.

The object of the game is to reach a pre-determined number of points in as few innings as possible. Usually between 200 and 800 depending on the skill level.

Unlike most 3-ball carom style games, the red ball is the cue-ball and the two white balls are the object balls. In a game like 3-Cushion or English Billiards, this is exactly the oppsite.

The game is "broken" (i.e. a "break" is shot) from behind the baulk-line at the ball on the opposite side of the pins, from there there are just two ways of scoring points:

• Hit a pin with a white ball (2 points per pin)
• Hit both white balls with the cue ball, called "making red" (4 points)

For a maximum of 14 points per hit.

The challenge of the game lies in its quite frankly absurd number of ways to foul a shot:

• Hitting a pin with the cue ball (at all)
• Causing a ball to jump off the table
• Pocketing the cue ball (gives ball in hand)
• Making red 3 times in a row without hitting any pins
• Not hitting a cushion in at least every other shot
• Knocking over the pins with something other than a ball
• Shooting with both feet off the ground
• "Touchéing", meaning to either hit the cue ball with somehting other than the tip of the cue or the cue still touching the cue ball when the cue ball makes contact with another ball.

Originally, causing a foul would lose you the points for the inning, but per modern rules, any points earned in the inning, except for any points earned during the foul shot are kept.

Missing altogether is not considered a foul.

Pocketing a white ball doesn't do anything. It is simply re-spotted on the oppsite side of the other white ball.

Here's a tournament in Kegler for those interested in watching.

Skomar

The "cousin" game to Kegler. According to one source I found, it was once regarded as a low-brow lower-class game associated with drinking and smoking. Danish Billiard Union players who were found playing this game supposedly had their memberships terminated on sight because they didn't want members in those circles.
The game is now officially recognised by the billiards union on equal footing with its older cousin.

The game is called Skomager or Skoma'r, Skomar, Skomagerpot, etc. depending on region. It essentially just translates to "shoemaker".
I had to look up the etymology of this, and it apparently stems from a time when calling someone a shoemaker was a bit of a slur.
Because being a shoemaker didn't require any real formal training or education of any sort, it was seen as low-class work. Thus anything and everything low-brow in Denmark was referred to as "shoemaker-something"; like "shoemaker-bass" being a simple repetitive bass-line, "shoemaker-rhyme" being bad poetry, "shoemaker-numbers" being approximations, and "shoemaker-rules" being simplified rules.

Either way the name stuck and the game is still played in pubs all over the country.

I call it a "cousin" because the game is quite different.

Returning from the other game are the following two rules:

• Hit a pin with a white ball (2 points per pin)
• Hit both white balls with the cue ball, called "making red" (4 points)

New to the game are the following:

• Game is no longer played in innings, turns change between every shot.
• It's now required to hit a cushion on every shot, instead of every other.
• Hitting a white with another white is called "making pale", and is also worth 4 points, though it can't be combined with "making red".
• Pocketing a white ball is worth 2 points.
• Hitting the centre pin alone without hitting anything else is 6 points.
• Hitting every pin all at once is 16 points.

Fouls are also much more punishing.
Instead of simply ending someone's turn, they also award the opponent points.
The amount of points awarded this way varies depending on the severity of the foul.

• Red ball topples pins having hit a white and a cushion: Scored points for the round are converted to penalty points.
• Red ball is pocketed: 2 penalty points + any other points for the shot.
• Red ball hits pins after hitting white but no cushion: 6 penalty points + points for the shot.
• Red ball hits pins after hitting cushion but no white: 6 penalty points + points for the shot.
• Topple pins with cue: 6 penalty points + points for the shot.
• Hitting the pins with any ball directly without hitting a cushion first: 6 penalty points + points for the shot.
• No ball hits a cushion: 6 penalty points + points for the shot.
• Cue-ball doesn't hit any other balls: 6 penalty points + points for the shot.
• White ball hit with cue: 6 penalty points + points for the shot.
  

Personally I find Skomar to be the more interesting game of the two.
The scoring opportunities are plentiful, and the simple act of having to change sides between shots both makes it a more interesting spectator sport, but it also makes for a more interesting game, since each shot has to both score a lot of points, but also put the opponent in a tricky spot.

Here's a video of Skomar in action: