Chip's Place

(Cheating a bit by rolling back the date a day, but watch what Lint's about to do with that!)

Had a fun night out in the Golden Ball last night. We played Bar Billiards, which is a game I'd never heard of before going there. It's a sort of cross between pool and pinball. There are 9 holes in the table (actually in the body of the table, rather than in the cushions like pool), each of which scores a differing number of points if a ball is potted there. There's one red ball and 7 whites, the red scoring double points if it's potted. Every time you pot a ball you have another go until either you miss or you foul, and in the latter case you score 0 for your current break - this also happens if you knock over any of the 3 skittles on the table.. There's a time limit on the game, and it's highest number of points wins. There are a few more rules, but they're fairly minor.

My main enjoyment (as with most things) came out of being quite good at it. I lost 2 games out of 7 or 8, and at one point if I'd not been so ambitious I'd have got 670 points off a single break, and would have cleared 2000 points for that game (to put this into perspective, I won another game with just 430 points).

Now that I've been bothered to go to Google, here's someone else's much better description of the game.

I also really like the pub itself. It's a bit of a pity I've only found that out now, because I used to live very close to it, and now I'm on the far side of town from it. There was a very cheery barman there who complimented me on my ability to order J20s correctly (by colour - take note Lint!), and we were still playing on the table after half eleven. I like the beer garden too.

Ooh, and Subway's finally open!

2 comments