Pub Games

It's difficult to find good pub games these days. In the UK, they're mostly long gone. You'll find a few here or there, such as Bar Billiards (see image) which I got to play once in east London, but even the staples are difficult to find. Bar Billards was actually a blast to play and it can be played with a bunch of people. Me and some friends were in the area looking for a place to watch a world cup matchlast summer when we stumbled upon this game. There were some laminated rules for the game, but though the words were english, we had no idea what they said. We played as best we could for a bit until the cook came running out to scold us for doing it wrong. After a brief instruction we got to playing it for real. The game consists of hitting the white ball from the same position each time. You strike one of the other balls and try and get one or more balls into the holes on the table sufrace without knocking over any of the skittles.

I'm sure these sort of games exist more frequently outside of central London, but I rarely get out to the sticks. You won't find pool, darts or even foosball. Your only distraction is the weekly pub quiz that many pubs put on where you and your team mates put your wits against others in the pub. I rarely play since I can rarely answer any of the questions. They're all to do with British pop culture and music which doesn't make its way across the Atlantic very often. I have yet to hear any questions about Fawlty Towers.

The Brits seem to love their trivia, or at least the ones that like trivia, like it a lot. I can't understnd why NTN isn't everywhere here. It seems like it would fit perfectly with the quiz obsession here. Any pub that has a TV has Sky satellite. Sky would make a pretty penny by offering an interactive quiz service. Its a lot of fun when there's a few teams playing NTN around the bar. While you also compete against others around the world, the best competition is between the local patrons. I suppose it takes precious TV space away from whatever football match is on TV. But that's all pubs are becoming these days - a place to gulp down beer and watch football. Bring back the games. Thankfully, traditional pubs have a champion.