Shuffleboard is a game in which players use cues to push weighted discs, sending them gliding down a narrow court, with the purpose of having them come to rest within a marked scoring area. As a more generic term, it refers to the family of shuffleboard-variant games as a whole.
The earliest references to shuffleboard (as table shuffleboard) appear in Tudor England. Henry VIII played "shovillabourde" for stakes, and custom "shovelboard" tables were kept in wealthy century English households until the 17th century. [1] Examples of such tables survive at Stanway House and Tredegar House. [2] [3] The rising popularity of billiards in that century displaced shovelboard from high society, [4] but variations of it continued in public houses. One of these called shove-groat was played during Henry's reign and was widespread enough to be banned by name in the Unlawful Games Act 1541. A similar game called shove ha'penny is still played today. [5]
Travel literature and other sources describe ship passengers improvising shuffleboard games on deck (also called deck billiards or deck skittles) as early as the 1830s to pass time at sea. [6] [7] One account describes shuffleboard as "a kind of deck bagatelle," a then-popular billiards game with numbered scoring targets. [8] Robert Ball is credited with bringing this "deck shuffleboard" ashore in 1913 when he added a court in front of his Lyndhurst Hotel in Daytona Beach, Florida. [9] The game spread through Daytona Beach and around the state, prompting the establishment of clubs and regulations. The St. Petersburg Shuffleboard Club began in 1924 with two courts and, driven by the game's surging popularity, expanded to 116 courts by 1939. [10]
Efforts to develop the game as a professional sport had limited success, and by the 1960s club participation had dropped significantly. The St. Petersburg Club was down to 35 members in the early 2000s before it rebounded with an influx of younger players. The game continues throughout the United States as an amateur pastime, attractive to older players due to its combination of low physical demands and strategic complexity. [10] The Florida version of the game is also played on cruise ships and has been adapted back into table form.
Players use a cue (cue-stick), to push their colored discs, down a court (a flat floor of concrete, wood or other hard material, marked with lines denoting scoring zones), attempting to place their discs within a marked scoring area at the far end of the court. The discs themselves are of two contrasting colors (usually yellow and black), each color belonging to a player or team. The scoring diagram is divided by lines, into six scoring zones, with the following values: 10, 8, 8, 7, 7, 10-off (minus ten).
After eight discs (four per team, taking alternating shots) have been played from one end of the court (a frame), the final score values of discs for each player (or team) in the scoring zones is assessed: If a disc is completely within a scoring zone without touching (overlapping) any part of the border-line of the zone, it is good and that zone value is added to the correct player's score for the frame, and then to the player's total points. Both players' good discs are added to their respective scores. Players (or teams of two players, one at each end) take turns going first during a game, so that the advantageous last shot of a frame (the hammer) also alternates between players.
The winner of the game may be the first to reach any total decided upon, or may be the higher score after playing a certain number of frames (e.g. 8, 12 or 16). There is also the 'first to 75-points' game. Ties are broken by playing extra frames (two for singles, four for doubles). [11]
Dimensions of a floor shuffleboard court can vary to suit available space, but an official shuffleboard court is 6 feet (1.8 m) wide by 39 feet (12 m) in length plus a 6-foot (1.8 m) shooting area at each end.[ citation needed ] Typically a scoring zone is painted at each end of the court to reduce set-up time between games. Each scoring zone comprises an isosceles triangle 6 feet × 9 feet with the short edge away from the shooter. Behind the scoring zone is the 10-off zone, an area 1½ feet deep. The court surface is usually a uniform dark green; lines are 1 inch wide except for the mid-shooting area. 1-inch (25 mm) white lines form the scoring triangle and further divide the triangle into the separate scoring zones. (Line width is not considered in court dimensions given here.)
The court is the same from each end, including:
Modern floor shuffleboard is played with eight round, hard, durable 6-inch (150 mm) diameter plastic discs. New discs are about 1 inch (25 mm) in thickness, weighing 15 ounces (430 g). In a set of discs, there are four discs of a light color and four of a dark color. One color is used by one team. The most common colors are yellow and black, but others are occasionally used.
Each player uses a cue (or cue-stick) to push their discs down the court to the opposite end. The cue length is 6 feet 3 inches (1.91 m) or less, with hard plastic feet on the end (as metal would damage the court surface).
There are two basic types of scoreboard:
Courts are available for use on residential decks or on any solid flat surface, in the form of roll-out plastic mats, or adjustable arrays of plastic tiles. With the tile courts, the dimensions can be adapted to the space available; e.g. it is possible to play on a court 30 ft long (9.1 m) by 5 ft wide (1.5 m).[ citation needed ] The roll-out mats are available in two sizes, 39 by 6 feet (11.9 m × 1.8 m) and 27 by 4.5 feet (8.2 m × 1.4 m). The smaller mats are designed to fit on a domestic patio or driveway.[ citation needed ] The biscuit and tang are the same standard size, regardless which court size is used. [13]
Discs are scored according to their final position at the end of the frame, rather than where they were originally shot, and striking any previously shot disc is permitted. These rules bring a significant strategic aspect to the gameplay. An unobstructed disc in the scoring area can be knocked out of the court or into the 10-off area by an opposing player. It is common to block the scoring area by shooting discs into the zone between the dead line and scoring triangle. A blocking disc on the opponent's side obstructs them from scoring with a straight shot, while a blocking disc on one's own side secures that side for straight shots. The last shot of a frame, called the "hammer," is a critical opportunity to change the score in one's favor.
The ISA was founded March 10, 1979, in St. Petersburg, Florida. The ISA was designed to make shuffleboard more popular in countries outside the North American continent, and to foster shuffleboard through international competitions. In 1981 in Muskegon, Michigan the first ISA Team World Championships were held, starting with teams from Canada, the USA and Japan only. Australia (1991), Brazil (1997), Germany (2006), Norway (2011) Russia (2013) and lately Netherlands (2023) joined the World Championships, which take place yearly and last for one week. [14]
In table shuffleboard, the play area is most commonly a wooden or laminated surface covered with silicone beads (colloquially called 'shuffleboard wax') to reduce friction. In the United States, a long, narrow 22 ft table is most commonly used, though tables as short as 9 ft are known.
Players try to slide metal-and-plastic pucks, sometimes called weights or shuckles, to come to rest within zones at the other end of the board. Cues are not used, the pucks being propelled with the hands directly on the raised table. There are scoring zones at each end of the table so that direction of play can rotate after each frame, or so that teams can play both directions during one frame. More points are awarded for weights scoring closer to the far edge of the board. Players take turns sliding the pucks, trying to score points, bump opposing pucks off the board, and/or protect their own pucks from bump-offs. The long sides of the table are bounded by gutters into which pucks can fall or be knocked (in which case they are no longer in play for the remainder of the frame). A variant known sometimes as bankboard has rubber cushions or 'banks' running the length of both sides of the table, instead of gutters, and as in billiards, the banks can be used to gain favorable position. A common and even smaller-scale British tabletop variant is shove ha'penny, played with coins, while a somewhat larger wooden-puck variant called sjoelen , which has much in common with the ball games bagatelle and skeeball, is played principally in the Netherlands.
The objective of the game is to slide, by hand, all four of one's Weights alternately against those of an opponent, so that they reach the highest scoring area without falling off the end of the board into the alley. Furthermore, a player's Weight(s) must be farther down the board than his opponent's Weight(s), in order to be in scoring position. This may be achieved either by knocking off the opponent's Weight(s), or by outdistancing them. Horse collar, the most common form of the game, is played to either 15 or, more typically, 21. Only the weights in front score. [15]
The standard size of outdoor court is 52 feet long and 10 feet wide. For playing on surface, players hold stick like paddles to propel the pucks (biscuits/discs) into a numerical area that shows lines with specific scoring points. [16]
Cue sports are a wide variety of games of skill played with a cue, which is used to strike billiard balls and thereby cause them to move around a cloth-covered table bounded by elastic bumpers known as cushions. Cue sports are also collectively referred to as billiards, though this term has more specific connotations in some varieties of English.
Crokinole is a disk-flicking dexterity board game, possibly of Canadian origin, similar to the games of pitchnut, carrom, and pichenotte, with elements of shuffleboard and curling reduced to table-top size. Players take turns shooting discs across the circular playing surface, trying to land their discs in the higher-scoring regions of the board, particularly the recessed centre hole of 20 points, while also attempting to knock opposing discs off the board, and into the 'ditch'. In crokinole, the shooting is generally towards the centre of the board, unlike carroms and pitchnut, where the shooting is towards the four outer corner pockets, as in pool. Crokinole is also played using cue sticks, and there is a special category for cue stick participants at the World Crokinole Championships in Tavistock, Ontario, Canada.
Snooker is a cue sport played on a rectangular billiards table covered with a green cloth called baize, with six pockets, one at each corner and one in the middle of each long side. First played by British Army officers stationed in India in the second half of the 19th century, the game is played with twenty-two balls, comprising a white cue ball, fifteen red balls, and six other balls—a yellow, green, brown, blue, pink, and black—collectively called the colours. Using a cue stick, the individual players or teams take turns to strike the cue ball to pot other balls in a predefined sequence, accumulating points for each successful pot and for each time the opposing player or team commits a foul. An individual frame of snooker is won by the player who has scored the most points. A snooker match ends when a player reaches a predetermined number of frames.
English billiards, called simply billiards in the United Kingdom and in many former British colonies, is a cue sport that combines the aspects of carom billiards and pool. Two cue balls and a red object ball are used. Each player or team uses a different cue ball. It is played on a billiards table with the same dimensions as one used for snooker and points are scored for cannons and pocketing the balls.
In sport, a goal may refer to either an instance of scoring, or to the physical structure or area where an attacking team must send the ball or puck in order to score points. The structure of a goal varies from sport to sport, and one is placed at or near each end of the playing field for each team to defend. For many sports, each goal structure usually consists of two vertical posts, called goal posts, supporting a horizontal crossbar. A goal line marked on the playing surface between the goal posts demarcates the goal area. Thus, the objective is to send the ball or puck between the goal posts, under or over the crossbar, and across the goal line. Other sports may have other types of structures or areas where the ball or puck must pass through, such as the basketball hoop. Sports which feature goal scoring are also commonly known as invasion games.
Air hockey is a Pong-like tabletop sport where two opposing players try to score goals against each other on a low-friction table using two hand-held discs ("mallets") and a lightweight plastic puck.
An ice hockey rink is an ice rink that is specifically designed for ice hockey, a competitive team sport. Alternatively it is used for other sports such as broomball, ringette, rinkball, and rink bandy. It is a rectangle with rounded corners and surrounded by walls approximately 1.22 metres (48 in) high called the boards.
Russian pyramid, also known as Russian billiards ', is a form of billiards played on a large billiard table with narrow pockets. It is played across Russia and several former Soviet/Eastern Bloc countries. In the West, the game is known as pyramid billiards, or simply pyramid.
Pool is a classification of cue sports played on a table with six pockets along the rails, into which balls are shot. Each specific pool game has its own name; some of the better-known include eight-ball, blackball, nine-ball, ten-ball, seven-ball, straight pool, one-pocket, and bank pool. Eight-ball is the most frequently played discipline of pool, and is often thought of as synonymous with "pool".
Novuss is a two-player game of physical skill which is closely related to carrom and pocket billiards. Novuss originates from Estonia and Latvia, where it is a national sport. The board is approximately 100 centimetres (39 in) square, typically made of wood, has pockets in each corner, and lines marked on the surface. The board is usually placed on a stand, but may be placed on a barrel or other surface that allows the pockets to hang down properly. It uses small discs instead of balls, and each player has a small puck instead of the cue ball used in other cue sports. Players use a small cue stick to propel their pucks into their colored object discs, knocking them into the pockets. The winner is the first one to sink all eight of their object discs.
Table shuffleboard is a game in which players push metal-and-plastic weighted pucks down a long and smooth wooden table into a scoring area at the opposite end of the table. Shooting is performed with the hand directly, as opposed to deck shuffleboard's use of cue sticks.
A rack is a piece of equipment that is used to place billiard balls in their starting positions at the beginning of a pocket billiards game. Rack may also be used as a verb to describe the act of setting billiard balls in their starting positions, or as a noun to describe a set of balls that are in their starting positions.
The following is a glossary of traditional English-language terms used in the three overarching cue sports disciplines: carom billiards referring to the various carom games played on a billiard table without pockets; pool, which denotes a host of games played on a table with six pockets; and snooker, played on a large pocket table, and which has a sport culture unto itself distinct from pool. There are also games such as English billiards that include aspects of multiple disciplines.
Rotation, sometimes called rotation pool, 15-ball rotation, or 61, is a pool game, played with a pocketed billiards table, cue ball, and triangular rack of fifteen billiard balls, in which the lowest-numbered object ball on the table must be always struck by the cue ball first, to attempt to pocket numbered balls for points.
Pichenotte refers to a family of several disk-flicking games, mostly French Canadian in origin, including crokinole, pitchnut, and North American carrom, which may sometimes be played with small cue sticks. Pichenotte is a Canadian French word meaning 'flick', which is derived from the European French word pichenette, also meaning 'flick'. These folk games are in the public domain, and are not subject to copyright like a commercial board game. Nor are they patented games. However, the names Pichenotte and Pitchnut are registered trademarks in the United States. The game community site Knipsbrat.com states that, like the German name Knipsbrat ('flicking-board'), "pichenotte is another name for crokinole" The Canadian game board collection at the Quebec Museum of Civilization in Quebec City includes both the square carrom-type board and the round crokinole-type game Crokinole is also called pichenotte throughout much of North America. Modern-day tournaments have been held as far apart as Tavistock, Ontario, and Santa Fe and Albuquerque, New Mexico.
This is a list of common terms used in the sport of ice hockey along with the definitions of these terms.
Balkline is the overarching title of a group of carom billiards games generally played with two cue balls and a red object ball on a cloth-covered, 5 foot × 10 foot, pocketless billiard table. The object of the game is to score points, also called counts, by a player striking their cue ball so it makes contact with both the opponent's cue ball and the object ball on a single stroke. A player wins the game by reaching a predetermined number of points. The table is divided by lines drawn on the surface, called balklines, into marked regions called balk spaces. Balk spaces define areas of the table surface in which a player may only score up to a threshold number of points while the opponent's cue ball and the object ball are within that region.
Snooker is a cue sport that is played on a baize-covered snooker table with pockets in each of the four corners and in the middle of each of the long side cushions. It is played using a cue and snooker balls: one white cue ball, 15 red balls worth one point each, and six balls of different colours: yellow, green (3), brown (4), blue (5), pink (6), black (7). A player wins a frame of snooker by scoring more points than the opponent(s), using the cue ball to pot the red and coloured object balls. A player wins a match when they have achieved the best-of score from a pre-determined number of frames. The number of frames is always odd so as to prevent a tie or a draw.
The English-originating version of eight-ball pool, also known as English pool, English eight-ball, blackball, or simply reds and yellows, is a pool game played with sixteen balls on a small pool table with six pockets. It originated in the United Kingdom and is played in the Commonwealth countries such as Australia and South Africa. In the UK and Ireland it is usually called simply "pool".
Fifteen-ball pool, also known as sixty-one pool, is a pocket billiards game developed in America in the nineteenth century from pyramid pool. Created by members of the Bassford's Billiard & Chess Rooms in Manhattan during the late 1830s or 1840s, it is the ancestor to many American pool games.
