shuffleboard

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A shuffleboard game being prepared on the deck of the MV Aurora.

Shuffleboard (more precisely deck shuffleboard, and also known as shuffle-board, shovelboard, shovel-board and shove-board [archaic])^[1] is a sport in which players use broom-shaped paddles to push weighted pucks, sending them gliding down a narrow and elongated 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.

History

Back in 15th Century England, folks played a game of sliding a "groat" (a large British coin of the day worth about four pence) down a table. The game was called shove groat and/or slide groat. Later, a silver penny was used and the name of the game became shove-penny and/or shovel-penny. The game was played by the young and old, and was a favorite pastime in the great country houses of Staffordshire, Winchester and Wiltshire.

While our Founding Fathers were busy putting together the makings of this great country, there were big shuffleboard matches being conducted throughout the colonies. Shuffleboard was popular among the English soldiers as well as the colonists.

In his play, The Crucible," concerning the historic witch trials of Salem, Mass., Arthur Miller wrote: In 1692, there was a good supply of ne’er-do-wells who dallied at the shuffleboard in Bridget Bishop’s Tavern." That item provides a written record of the entrance of the game into the New World.

The fame of the game spread, and soon it came upon the public scene in more ways that one. In 1848, in New Hanover, Pennsylvania, a case of "The State vs. John Bishop" to decide the question, "Is shuffleboard a game of chance or a game of skill?" Came up for trail. The judge ruled thus:

"Though the defendant kept a public gaming table, as charged, and though diverse persons played thereat and bet spirituous liquors on the game, the game was not a game of chance, but was altogether a game of skill."

The game shed its crude beginnings when American cabinetmakers such as Hepplewhite and Duncan Phyfe turned out some of their finest inlaid cabinet work on shuffleboard game tables for the wealthy homes of New York City.

By 1897, table shuffleboard rated as much space in the metropolitan newspapers in the New York City area as prizefighting and baseball. Highly publicized tournaments played by such colorful characters as "Big Ed’ Morris, Dave Wiley, Alex Scott, Ed Gardland, and George Lavender drew hordes of fans. The fans faithfully followed the players to tournaments in New York City, Newark, Paterson, Hoboken, Jersey City and Bloomfield, New Jersey, and even into Philadelphia. The fans included important figures of the business, theatrical, and political worlds.

Shuffleboard made its was across the country. In 1904, Gentleman Jim Corbett, an avid player, had a tavern owner named Croll install a table in his Alamedia, California, pub. "Doc" Croll, his son, claimed it was the first shuffleboard in that part of the country.

World War II opened the "Swinging Forties" and shuffleboard really came into its own. The intrinsic appeal of the game – skill, diversity, competitiveness, availability to young and old, strong and disabled, the serious game, the fun game, offered the kind of release needed in those turbulent years.

Hollywood climbed on the shuffleboard bandwagon and took it up, at first, as a source of good publicity. Then when the pin-up girls and bandleaders and actors discovered they really liked the game, shuffleboards found their way into the studios and homes of the stars. People like Betty Grable, Harry James, Merv Griffin, Alan Ladd; all had their own shuffleboards. Shuffleboard grew to its greatest height in the 1950s. Most major shuffleboard manufactures sponsored nationwide shuffleboard tournaments. These were the biggest tournaments ever held; one had 576 teams participating.

Fierce competition among major manufactures and suppliers, lack of uniform rules and organization, the inability to gain sponsorship of the sport, and general internal strife in all facets of shuffleboard, led to a demise of the game in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Some feared it was damaged beyond "repair," but others invested their time, efforts and talents to breath life into the sport that they had loved. That dedication paid off, by the mid-‘80s, shuffleboard experienced a revival, a revival that has extended and strengthened in the ‘90s.

While organization, cooperation and communication have been key elements in the revival of shuffleboard; probably the most important factor has been an almost universal realization in The World of Shuffleboard that new young shooters will be the continued lifelines of the sport. Across the nation, established shooters have made it their top priority to help novice players develop their talents and nurture their enthusiasm for league and tournament play. As long as that remains a priority, shuffleboard will continue to grow.

One major accomplishment in this decade was the establishment of a National Shuffleboard Hall of Fame in 1995. Since then, several states have formed state or area shuffleboard Halls of Fame. Often, those who have been honored by their respective states are then nominated for induction into the National Hall of Fame.

To date, 12 people have been inducted into the National Hall of Fame: (California) PeeWee Ramos, Bob Miles, Billy Chiles; (Oklahoma) Bill Melton, Glen Davidson; (New Jersey) Mickey Mickens, Sol Lipkin; (Texas) Earl Kelly; (Nebraska) Denny Busch; (Pacific Northwest) Jim Foran. Several others are currently going through the nomination process. It is the NSHF’s goal to recognize excellence for all deserving participants in The World of Shuffleboard and to finance a "home" for preserving the history of shuffleboard so that generation to follow will have a knowledge of and appreciation for that history.

*Information provided by the American Shuffleboard Company, The Phil-American Shuffleboard Company, and The Board Talk

Game play

A close up of the scoring triangle.

This section requires expansion.

In deck shuffleboard, the players use sticks, called cues, to push weighted disks, called pucks, along a usually wooden surface (e.g. the deck of a ship), placing the disk within a triangular scoring zone at the far end of the court. The pinnacle of the triangle points toward the shooter, and the zone is divided horizontally into four numbered sub-zones, the numbers representing point values. If the disk lands completely within the small triangular tip zone without touching any part of the borders of the triangle, it is worth ten points; completely within the trapezoidal second tier of the triangle, it is worth eight points; and completely within the trapezoidal third tier of the triangle, seven points. If the disk lands in the large, rearmost and also trapezoidal '10 Off' section, it costs minus ten points. Many boards have a small triangle drawn in the center of the '10 off' trapezoid, splitting it and making it harder to land completely inside the section. The game is played in matches of ten frames (a frame is both players or teams taking their turns). The basic strategy involves deflecting the opposition's disks out of zones with a positive value, and increasing one's own points by landing disks into areas of a high point value.

A standard deck shuffleboard court is 39–feet long by 6–ft wide. Each end of the court has a scoring triangle, obviating the need to retrieve the pucks and return to the original end of the court. Another 6–feet of space is provided at each end of the court beyond the scoring triangles, which is where the players stand, with play alternating in direction down the court after each frame.

Newer courts are now available, for use on decks or on any solid flat surface, in the form of roll-out plastic mats, or an adjustable system 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 by 5–ft wide.^{[citation needed]} The roll-out mats are available in two sizes, 39–x–6–ft and 27–ft by 4–ft–6–in. The smaller mats are designed to fit on a domestic patio or driveway.^{[citation needed]} The discs and cues are the same standard sizes, regardless which court size is used.^[2]

Teams

Shuffleboard can be played either one-on-one or by two teams of two. After all pucks have been played on one 'end', only the winning puck or group of pucks scores (according to the points marked on the board). Play then continues in the opposite direction. The winner is the first to a set number of points

World championships

The 2009 World Championships in Deck Shuffleboard were held aboard the cruise ship Minerva in Libyan waters off Tripoli. The world championships are played according to the Leptis Magna convention, in teams of 2 scoring down from 200. The championships were won by the UK.

Table shuffleboard variants

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 USA, 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 sjoelbak, which has much in common with the ball games bagatelle and skeeball, is played principally in the Netherlands.

OBJECT OF THE GAME

Briefly, 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. The most common game is played to 21 and this is called horse collar but you also can play to 15. Below is an image of the weights on the board only the weights in front score [[See Image^[3]]]

References

External links

• Deck Shuffleboard Official Rules
• Table shuffleboard tournament results
• Shuffleboard Game Table Differences.
• Short History of Deck Shuffleboard
• Video of Deck/Court Shuffleboard
• International Shuffleboard Association
• Shuffleboard Game Rules
• Shuffleboard Game Rules with links to other games