play marbles

Played marbles as a kid. Haven’t done it in years. Maybe I can play it with my daughters. 3 years ago

I’m a 30-year-old dude who never played marbles in his life… until today. Here’s some thigns I found out.

Level Surface.
Your surface has to be completely level. Even the slightest hint of non-levelness will make the marbles roll all over the place.

Smooth Surface.
We played on a rough sidewalk which made our attempted shots bounce all over the place. It was really really hard to even hit a marble that was a mere one foot away. And if you did hit a marble, you really had to clobber it to make it move out of the court.

Perpendicular thumb.
I read the rules for marbles online in a couple places. Yadda Yadda rules. But shooting techniques. This I need to research more. I found more success when shooting with your thumb perpendicular to the ground. It enabled a higher level of accuracy. 5 years ago

I still have my huge sack of marbles from when I was a kid. Whenever you won a game you would collect all the marbles played in that game. They came in different sizes of different values, but as well as that you have all kinds of different designs that were like artworks to me. there were the speckled ones that looked like outer space (black ones) or eggs (light ones). There were the transparent ones with coloured swirls on the inside. 5 years ago