Let's Play Marbles!

Monday, I went out to Mark and Kim's to watch Erin, who was home from school sick. After playing a few games with her it was time for her to lay down and rest for awhile.  While she was lying there, I told her about the things I used to do when I was a young boy.  I told her about marbles.
This is one game from my childhood that you just don't see played any longer.  I can't imagine how many hours I spent playing marbles, but it filled a lot of the Summer.  We basically played 3 different games.  'Ringers', 'Pig-Eye', and 'Chasers'.

RINGERS  This game was started by drawing a circle, and each player putting in the stated amount of marbles.  For us, this was usually 5 marbles each.  We would then draw a straight line and get back about 10 feet and 'lag' to the line with our 'Taw' (Shooting Marble).  The closest to the line went first followed my the next closest, etc.  A player would shoot his marble from the edge of the circle trying to knock a marble out of the circle.  Any marble knocked out would be his.  If a player shot and knocked a marble out he got another turn.  He continued until he missed, and then it would be the next players turn.  The game continued until all the marbles where knocked out of the circle.







PIG-EYE  This game was similar to 'Ringers'.  But, you drew an  'Eye', instead of a ring.  This was an oval, really football or eye shaped, much smaller than the ring we would draw for 'Ringers'.  The game started the same way, with a lag to a line to see who went first.  Then the stated number of marbles was put in by each player.  The difference in this game was that wherever your 'Taw' ended up after you shot, that's where you shot from the next time.  You didn't always hit from the edge of the line as in 'Ringers'.  Hitting a marble with another marble, or really any ball with another ball, the ball that's hit flies away, but the hitting marble usually stops at contact.  So, if you played your cards right, you could wipe out all the marbles from 'Pig-Eye' with a good run.

CHASERS  We probably played this game more than the others.  It may be hard to explain, and may seem the silliest, but we enjoyed it.  We usually played in the grass.  Each player would shoot their marble out into the grass and we would take turns.  You tried to hit the other person's marble, and each time you hit him he had to give you a marble.  We had a '3 marble limit' on each series of hits. When you hit another marble, you got a marble and another turn.  So, if you hit him and stopped right by him, you could bump him again, then again, and then shoot away, winning 3 marbles.  The strategy was to shoot close enough to another marble that he would try to hit you and miss, leaving his marble close enough for you to hit. 

As you can see, the best marble player in the neighborhood usually had a lot of marbles, and the poorer shooters, like me, spent a lot of their allowance buying marbles. I wonder if they could make a marbles "WII" game?