Sometimes, it feels as though it would be all but impossible to create a new sport or entertainment venture. You can feel as though everything that will be created has been created, but then someone comes along and decides to merge a couple of different things and offers an entirely new option for people to think about when they’re looking for something to do.
As you might well have worked out, that is the bracket that Crazy Pool fits into, being something of a cross between the game of pool and the world of crazy golf, asking you to get your ball home in as few moves as possible. If you’re based in London, you can head to the Roxy Ball Room St Mary Axe to check it out.
What Is It?
Imagine a crazy golf course that is set up on a table, meaning that you can lean over it rather than having to use a long golf putter in order to take shots. Now imagine that you are handed a pool cue rather than a putter and asked to get your ball into the hole at the end of each of the obstacles on offer. In short, you have just imagined Crazy Pool. To add to the trickiness of it all, you won’t be using pool balls to navigate the course. Instead, you will be trying to send a golf ball from one end of the course to the other thanks to the means of hitting it with your pool cue.
If that sounds a bit mad to you then you’ve got a vague sense of where the game is heading, having been created by the ‘mad scientists’ that work for Roxy. It is a wild and whacky adventure that punters enjoy the challenge of, trying to get their ball home in the fewest shots that they can. Sold as the ‘game you never knew you needed’, it is only available at select Roxy venues around the country and the Roxy at St Mary Axe in London just so happens to be one of them. That means you can go bowling, say, play some table tennis and then hit up the Crazy Pool course.
How to Play
There is an attempt with Crazy Pool to blend together the American sport of pool with golf, which was invented in Scotland. Surprisingly, they have opted not to call it Scotican Polf, or something equally as ridiculous, but have instead chosen to go with the much easier-to-understand Crazy Pool. If it sounds like something you fancy trying your hand at, you might well wonder how it is that the game is played. The answer lies in picking up your pool cue, putting down your golf ball and making an attempt to complete the first hole in as few shots as you’re able to manage.
Of course, things aren’t ever going to be as simple as they sound. Each of the holes has obstacles that stand in your way, making life extremely difficult for you as you attempt to get your ball into the hole. There is also the slight sticking point that you have just six shots available to you in order to get your ball in before you need to pick it up and let the next player have a go. In other words, if your aim is off or the obstacle in question causes you more trouble than you’re happy with, you will end up scoring the maximum on that hole and have a mountain to climb to bring your score down.
Scoring
In terms of scoring, it works just like crazy golf. Each time you take a shot, you score one. You can take up to six shots, but the fewer shots that you can complete the hole in, the better. Either you or someone else in your party needs to take on the responsibility of keeping score, with the player who has taken the fewest shots to get around the course ending up as the overall winner when you’ve played all of the holes on offer. Of course, there’s no reason why you can’t agree on friendly rules within your own grouping in order to try to make the game as fun as possible for all concerned.
Ultimately, ‘fun’ is the aim of the game here. There are no hard and fast rules, up to the point that you can even move from one hole to a different one in whatever order you choose, should you be stuck behind some other people at one hole or another. You might want to instigate a rule whereby chipping off the table results in a penalty stroke, for example, or you could say that players can play in teams and take turns taking shots. Whatever it is that you want to do in order to make the entire experience as exciting as it can be for you and the rest of the party you’re playing with.