Pub Games are an integral part of traditional British pub life, especially in the English countryside. Darts is far and away the most popular pub game throughout the English-speaking world. Most pubs in Britain have a dart board and an area set aside for players. In the past 20 years, the game has moved out of the pub and world championship matches are contested in large arenas packed with supporters.

The game is believed to have started when English archers, who were the backbone of the army before the invention of guns and artillery, practiced their art in inns when they were on leave from military duties. They would mark out a playing surface in chalk on the end of a wooden cask behind the bar and fire whittled-down versions of their arrows to see who could hit the target, including the bull’s eye in the center, with the greatest accuracy. In some parts of England, the East End of London in particular, modern darts with their feathered flights are known as arrows, pronounced “arrers.”

The game of darts has a standard board with doubles and trebles marked in 20 segments, but it is by no means universal. In some parts of England, boards have only doubles and no trebles, whereas a “fives” board has 12 segments. Darts has long been a popular game in France and Belgium where it is known as fléchettes in French or vogelpik in Flemish. In these countries, players use four darts per round as opposed to three. A vogelpik board is on display in the Bruges Folk Museum as part of a reconstruction of a 19th-century Flemish inn called De Zwarte Kat or the Black Cat.

Skittles is another British pub game with many different versions. Alley skittles is widely played in the southwest counties of England, with hundreds of thriving leagues taking part. The rules of the game vary but there are always nine skittles or pins in a set. Players either bowl a wooden ball at the skittles or aim a large disc known as a cheese. Variations on alley skittles are also played in northwest England and the Midlands. Where pubs do not have space for skittle alleys, the game is played in the main body of the pub on a table. The two main versions are Devil among the Tailors, an 18th-century game in which a ball on a cord is swung to hit the skittles, and Hood Skittles, in which a flat cheese is bounced off the cushioned walls of the table. A version of table skittles played in parts of Kent, southeast England, has the charming name of Daddlums, whereas in Oxfordshire Aunt Sally is played with a single pin and six throwing batons.

Bar billiards was brought to Britain from France and Belgium in the 1930s, although the origins of the game may lie in Russia. A table covered in green baize has nine holes or pockets with each hole guarded by a pin, a wooden sentinel often shaped like a mushroom. Players armed with cues have to sink seven white balls with a red cue ball. If they knock over a pin, then points are deducted from their scores. A similar game is bagatelle, played in France as well as Britain. As one version of bagatelle is known as Mississippi; it may also have been played at one time in the United States. In common with bar billiards, the aim is to sink balls into holes. There are no pins guarding the holes in this game. Both bar billiards and bagatelle have declined markedly in the past 2 decades because of the popularity of an American import into British pubs, namely pool.

Quoits is an outdoor pub game that involves throwing horseshoes or a fully round iron ring over a post or pegs in the earth. Its origins are unclear. Some believe it was a Roman game; others think it came from Ancient Greece—a descendant of discus throwing—whereas still others argue it came from northern Germany and the Low Countries. Certainly the Dutch introduced a version of quoits to North America. It is indisputably an ancient game, with two English kings, Edward III and Henry V, banning a game they called coits or coytes. In 19th- and 20th-century England and Scotland the game became popular, with pub teams vying for supremacy and waging large bets on the outcome. Indoor versions of quoits known as Caves or Flat Board survive in a few pubs, with rubber rings pitched onto a numbered board. Ringing the Bull is distantly related to Quoits: a copper ring suspended on a string has to be lobbed over a horn or hook mounted on the wall.

Other outdoor pub games involve hitting a ball with a stick. They have a spring that throws a ball in to the air and the player has to hit the ball with a stick toward a target or a net. Versions of the game include Bat and Trap and Knur and Spell and are believed to be the forerunners of baseball, cricket, and golf.

Shove Halfpenny (pronounced Shove Ha’penny) is a popular pub game in which pennies or similar coins are shoved or pushed with the player’s hand along a board with numbered partitions or beds. In a version of the game that originated in the Netherlands, the pennies have to be pushed through narrow openings into partitions.

Card games are widely played in pubs but the most popular indoor pub game after darts is dominoes, or “doms” for short. It was introduced in the 19th century and is thought to have originated in China. It was played widely in France as well as Britain. The game has many versions but is based on players holding dominoes or tiles with a varied number of pips on each tile. The aim when a player puts down a tile is to ensure that the outer pips, when added up, are either five or three or multiples of five and three. For example, if the pips add up to fifteen, the player scores three points for three fives, plus a further five points for five threes, a total score of eight. The game of dominoes arouses great passion among the participants, no doubt as a result of the copious amounts of beer consumed as the game progresses.