Table shuffleboard
Sports · Table sports
Also Shuffleboard, Shovelboard, Shove ha'penny
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Summary — 2–4 players
Table shuffleboard is the American bar game of sliding weighted pucks down a long waxed table into scoring zones at the far end. Two players or two pairs shoot four weights a side a frame, only the side with the furthest weight scores, one to three for the zone and four for a hanger, and the first to fifteen wins. The sheet keeps the score and the line is the host's to move.
- Scored by
- first to fifteen, or the line the host sets; only the side with the furthest weight scores a frame; the app counts games won
- Origin
- The pub game of shove-groat and shovelboard, played in England since the fifteenth century; the long waxed table is American.
Rules
How to play
Players and equipment
Two players, or two pairs, at a long shuffleboard table dusted with wax. Four weights each, red and blue. The scoring zones are marked at each end: 1, 2 and 3 towards the end, and a weight hanging over the edge without falling is a hanger, worth 4.
A full-size table is twenty-two feet long and less than two feet wide, with a gutter down each side and across each end to catch the weights that leave the board; bar tables run shorter and play the same way. The wax is a fine powder, sometimes called sand or speed, thrown down the board so a weight slides rather than drags.
SquareScores keeps the score: a row is a frame, a column is a player or a pair, and the line is fifteen unless the host moves it. Twenty-one is the other common game.
The deal
Toss for the first shot; after that, the side that scored in the last frame shoots first in the next. Both players shoot from the same end, alternating one weight at a time, and walk to the other end for the next frame.
Shooting first is the disadvantage. The side that shoots last has the hammer, the final weight of the frame with nothing to come after it, and handing the first shot to whoever just scored passes the hammer to the side that did not.
Play
Slide a weight down the table. Knock your opponent's weights off, block the lane, or nose your own weight into the 3 zone. A weight that falls into the gutter is out of the frame.
A weight has to travel past the foul line at the far end to count at all; one that stops short of it is taken off the board at once. A frame is over when all eight weights have been shot.
Only the side with the furthest weight scores in a frame, and it scores every weight of its own that lies ahead of the best of the other side's.
Furthest means nearest the far end of the table, whatever zone it is in. So if red's best weight is a 3 and blue's best is a 2, red scores that 3 and any other red weight lying beyond blue's 2, and a red weight in the 1 zone behind it counts nothing. Blue scores nothing at all that frame.
Doubles
- Ends
- Partners stand at opposite ends, so each plays every other frame
- Order
- The same side shoots first in a frame as in singles
Scoring
Scoring
- Zone 1
- 1
- The weight lies wholly past the first line
- Zone 2
- 2
- Past the second line
- Zone 3
- 3
- Past the third line, short of the edge
- Hanger
- 4
- Overhanging the end of the table
- On a line
- —
- A weight touching a line scores the lower zone
Enter the frame's points for the side that scored. The other side enters nothing, or a 0.
A weight scores the higher zone only when the whole of it has crossed the line, so a weight sitting on the line between the 2 and the 3 is a 2. A hanger is any weight that sticks out over the far edge and has not fallen, whether by a hair or by half its width.
A worked game
Alice plays Ben, red against blue, to fifteen. Alice shoots first in the opening frame, so Ben has the hammer.
- Frame 1
- Ben 5
- Ben has a 3 and a 2 beyond Alice's best, a 1
- Frame 2
- Alice 4
- Alice's hammer knocks Ben's 3 off and hangs over the edge; Ben's 2 is behind it
- Frame 3
- Alice 4
- Alice has a weight touching the line into the 3, counted 2, and another 2 beyond Ben's 1
- Frame 4
- Ben 3
- Ben's first weight stops short of the foul line and comes off; his 3 stands alone at the end
The first frame is the plain case: Ben has the furthest weight, so only Ben scores, and he counts every blue weight lying beyond the best red one, a 3 and a 2 for five. Having scored, he shoots first in the second frame and Alice gets the hammer, which she uses to knock his 3 into the gutter with a weight that carries on to hang over the edge: a hanger, four, and her only scoring weight, because her other red weight in the 1 zone is behind Ben's surviving 2. In the third frame one of Alice's weights sits on the line between the 2 and the 3, so it is a 2; with another 2 ahead of Ben's best she scores four and leads eight to five. In the fourth Ben's short weight is lifted the moment it stops, but his last weight reaches the 3 with nothing red beyond it, and three brings him level. The frames go into the sheet one row at a time, and the game ends when a column reaches fifteen.
Ending
The first side to fifteen wins. Tap End match to bank the game, and the leaderboard counts games won. There is no need to land on fifteen exactly: a side on twelve that scores five has won.
Strategy
The block
A weight parked in front of your best one, in the 1 zone or just past the foul line, is a block: to knock your scorer off, the other side has to get through it or round it first. Shooting first in a frame, put your opening weight short and central, where it protects the lane rather than scores, and build behind it. A block to one side is simply a weight worth one.
Knocking off
A weight lying in the 3 is a target, and the shot to remove it is a straight, firm slide down the same line. Hit it full and your weight often stops close to where theirs was, which is the ideal; catch it thin and both may leave the board. Knock off whenever their weight is beating yours and you have a weight to spare, and never at a weight that is not scoring against you: a blue weight in the 1 behind your 3 is doing you no harm.
The hammer
The last weight of the frame is the most valuable, because nothing can answer it. Holding the hammer, keep a weight back and play the frame so that the last shot decides it: knock their leader off, tap your own weight up a zone, or draw quietly into the 3 when the lane is clear. A frame you cannot win with the hammer is one to spoil: knock everything off and let nobody score rather than let them score five. Shoot for a hanger only when the frame is lost without it, because a weight aimed at the edge falls off about as often as it stays.
Reading the drift
No table is perfectly flat, and the wax is never evenly spread. Watch the first two or three weights of the frame and see whether they drift left or right as they slow, and by how much, then aim off by that much. A freshly waxed table is fast, and a weight that would have stopped in the 3 last week will fly off the end; the first frame is for finding the speed.
Variations
Knock off
The name of the game described above: four weights each, alternate shots, only the leading side scores, first to fifteen or twenty-one. When somebody says they play shuffleboard, this is nearly always what they mean.
To twenty-one
The same game with a longer line. On SquareScores the host sets the target when the game is launched and can move it during play; the frames are entered the same either way.
Tap and draw
Knocking the other side's weights off is not allowed: a weight that does so is removed and the weight it moved is put back where it was. You may only draw, sliding a weight quietly into a zone, or tap your own weights further up, and at the end of the frame every weight in a zone scores for its owner, not only the leading side's. A gentler game, and a good one for a crowded bar.
Horse collar
A race to fifty-one in which one side shoots all its weights alone in a frame while the other watches, and then the other side has its frame. A hanger is worth thirteen. Tables differ on the rules for opening and finishing, so ask before you play.
Shove ha'penny
The English pub game the table descends from: coins shoved up a small polished board into nine narrow beds, the aim being three coins in every bed. Different in every detail and the same in spirit.
FAQs
What is a hanger in shuffleboard?
A weight that has slid to the far end of the table and sticks out over the edge without falling into the gutter. It scores four, more than any zone, because it is the hardest weight to shoot. A weight that has fallen off scores nothing, however close it came.
What if a weight is on the line in shuffleboard?
It scores the lower zone. A weight has to be wholly past a line to score the higher one, so a weight touching the line between the 2 and the 3 is a 2, and one still touching the first line has not scored at all. Look straight down at the weight, not along the table, before you decide.
Who shoots last in shuffleboard?
The side that did not score in the previous frame. The scoring side shoots first in the next frame, which gives the other side the last weight, called the hammer. In the first frame, toss for it. In doubles the same rule applies, with the partners at the far end shooting the next frame.
How do you score in table shuffleboard?
Only the side with the furthest weight scores in a frame, and it counts every weight of its own that lies beyond the other side's best: one for the 1 zone, two for the 2, three for the 3 and four for a hanger. The other side scores nothing that frame, and the first side to fifteen, or twenty-one, wins.
How long is a shuffleboard table?
Twenty-two feet is the regulation length, and about twenty inches wide. Bars and homes have tables from nine feet upwards; the scoring zones are the same, and only the distance changes.
Do you have to score exactly fifteen?
No. The first side to reach or pass the line wins in the frame that gets it there, and the same applies at twenty-one.
What is the wax on a shuffleboard table?
A fine powder of tiny beads, sold as shuffleboard wax, sand or speed, that the weights ride on; without it a weight drags and stops within a few feet. More powder is faster. A table is dusted before a game and topped up when it slows.