Great Pub Table Games
From ancient taverns to the internet age, timeless games entertain and bring people together Then and now Pub table games date back to early Roman taverns, where men gathered to play Draughts, a two-player strategy board game that Americans adopted and called checkers. Indoor dice, card, board, coin, cue, dart, and throwing games have entertained drinking men for centuries. In 1495 Henry VII restricted indoor games because they distracted men from spending time on archery skills. Pool, bar billiards, shuffleboard, and cricket are traditional bar and pub games. More extreme games have ranged from cockfights to shooting live ducks. Around 1940 pinball machines and slot machines became popular pub games. They were the forerunners to electronic board and quiz game favorites of the twenty-first century. A toast to pub pastimes It is believed that the first dartboards were made from the bottoms of wine barrels. Darts is a coordination game that dates back to the 1870s England. According to today's regulations, the dartboard is hung so that the bull's-eye is 5 feet, 8 inches from the floor; darts are thrown from a line 7 feet and 9ΒΌ inches from the board. Originally two players took turns throwing up to three darts, beginning with a set score of 501 or 301 and reducing that score to zero, but several other variations of the game now exist. |  |
Dice games are plentiful: Craps, Greed, High Roller, Hooligan, and Aces are tavern favorites that have launched countless bets across pub tables. Pubs have made been made rich with dollars from drinking dice games like Scumbag, Six Cups, Chase the Ace, and Twenty-One Aces. Board games (some using dice) like backgammon and checkers have also entertained many a drinking man and woman.
Dice and chips are also used in many card games exist- some that use traditional decks of 52 cards, some with special decks, others that use double decks of regular or special cards. There are card game families like poker that are made up of multiple sub-games. Card games may rely on standard rules or rules that vary by region, culture, or by who brought the deck to the pub table.
