Crokinole:
Bringing Canada’s favorite pastime to my home town in Utah.
Updates coming soon!!
I usually describe Crokinole to the uninitiated as tabletop curling. You take turns shooting little discs towards the center and can knock the other player’s pieces off. You get points at the end of each round for whatever pieces are left on the board and for any pieces scored in the center. For more complete rules, scroll to the bottom. We love it as a 2-player game or as teams of 2 for a 4-player game.
My friend and I have been experimenting with building our own crokinole boards. The first board took us several months, but now we’re down to a couple weeks. We love sharing our passion of obscure-in-America games, and crokinole is top of the list.
If you would like to talk about ordering a custom board, reach out here.
The Crokinole rules we use!
These are modified slightly from the official rules we googled that one time before an unofficial tournament, but we think they work great. We often use our own scoring metric based on how frequently we want to rotate teams. For example, we’ll use the tournament-style scoring to judge a round, winner gets 2 points and 1 point to each team in the event of a tie, and then play to a predetermined score such as “first team/player to 7 points wins.”
These are edited slightly* but are mostly copied and pasted from from the rules found at: https://www.worldcrokinole.com/thegame.html
*We edited what we felt helped with clarity. I have also added in some thoughts for house rules or info for new players to have a greater chance at success with the game.
Playing Guidelines
The object of the game is to shoot your discs, 6-each for a team game (dividing 12 of one color to each team, and players of one team sitting opposite each other) or 8-each for a 1v1 game (each player sitting opposite the other), attempting to knock your opponent’s discs into the outer ditch or into a lower scoring position.
Discs are to be shot only with a finger (unless participating in a game designated for use of cues). No finger guards may be used. What we tell new people if shooting the discs is hurting their fingers, is to place their shooting finger as close to the disc as they can. This allows you to sort of “push” the disc instead of flicking into it.
During a shot, only the shooting hand and associated arm can come into contact with the board or table. Players cannot intentionally move the board, table or chair in an attempt to gain an unfair advantage.
Players must initiate all their shots from between their quadrant lines and touching the outer ring. A disc may exceed the quadrant line of the player, but must remain touching the player’s quadrant line. This means a piece can be shot with most of it past the quadrant line, as long as at least a small part of the disc is still touching the shooting player’s boundaries. (The shooting line for each player is the outer line from one perpendicular cross line to the next. Meaning the outside area is divided into 4 sections, and the player’s available shooting line is from one dividing line to the next, touching that outside ring.)
A shooting disc cannot be placed on the board until it is your turn. All shots must be initiated from a flat position. Once your hand is in a shooting position and the disc leaves your finger or cue, a shot is judged to have taken place. Play progresses clockwise around the board. (When playing with new people, we house rule that if the disc hasn’t left the starting line, the player may re-shoot. This is for small flubs that are embarrassing but surprisingly common.)
A disc that at any time leaves the perimeter of the raised playing surface, the deck, is deemed to be officially out of bounds and must remain in the ditch until the end of the round. This is true even if the disc bounces back onto the playing area.
At the end of a shot, any discs that are touching the outer line are deemed out of play and must immediately be placed in the ditch.
Neither the board nor the chair of any player may be moved while the game is in progress. This includes no tipping of the chair. When a player is shooting, at least one portion of the posterior (the “one cheek rule”) must be in contact with his/her chair. At no time may any part of the body, except the feet, touch the floor. No other means of support is allowed while taking a shot.
Starting To Play
Players take turns attempting valid shots, shooting one disc per turn, proceeding clockwise around the board. After each turn, 20‘s sunk will be removed and placed in a designated area visible to all players for scoring at the end of the round. A round ends when all players have shot the designated number of discs. The starting player for each subsequent round will rotate between players/teams. For a 4-player game, we typically rotate in a clockwise fashion so that after each round, the starting player is the player to the left of whoever started the previous round. This way each player will get a chance to start a round, but it also rotates which team will have the final shot of the round.
Before shooting, a player must wait until all motion of the discs from the previous turn have ceased.
Your non-played discs are to be kept outside of the board on the corner of the table. This is so you can track how many shots each player has left and so that the players aren’t confusing extras from the gutter.
At the end of the round, the value of the discs on the board, including 20’s, are totaled before any discs may be moved. (See Scoring)
A Valid Shot
If any opposing discs are in play, at least one of the shooter’s discs must strike an opposing disc, either directly or in combination, by bumping one of his/her discs already in play into an opposing disc.
If there are no opposing discs in play then a player’s shot must “play to the middle” (we call this a “free” or “open” shot). This means at the end of this shot, at least one of the player’s discs involved in the shot must be at least touching the 15-point line or remain inside the 15-point circle. This would include a 20 in the center hole. This can be achieved by a direct shot or in combination with discs already in play.
Any invalid shot is removed. All pieces affected by the invalid shot are also removed. In a free or open shot that is invalid, meaning the shooter or pieces touched by the shooter do not “play to the middle,” all pieces touched will be removed.
Damage Rule
An out-of-bounds disc that re-enters the playing surface must be removed from play. Any discs on the playing surface that were moved by the re-entering disc will remain in their new position and any 20’s made will count (this does not apply to the re-entering piece, even if you sink a 20).
The Spinning Disc Rule
If a disc touches or crosses the outer line but does not leave the raised playing surface and returns under its own momentum to end up inside the outer line, it will be considered still in play.
Scoring
The value of a disc flat in the center hole is 20; inside the pegs is 15; outside the pegs is 10; and the outer circle is 5. It is possible for a piece to be in the center hole but at an angle. This is called a hanger and is incredibly frustrating to the player whose piece didn’t drop. The hanger does not count as a 20 unless it gets bumped in by another shot. Shaking the table at this point is also prohibited. I’m looking at you, Sean.
A disc touching the line of a dividing circle is counted at the lower value during scoring. Pieces only move down when scoring or when pushed by other pieces in the course of a shot. Meaning you wouldn’t move a piece by hand into the lower valued circle during the course of a round.
After all discs have been shot, players/teams add up the value of all of their discs, including 20‘s. The player/team with the higher points is the winner of the round. That player/team receives 2 points. The team who loses the round will receive zero points. If the round is tied, each player/team receives 1 point.
Another way to score is to give the higher scoring team points for the difference in score. For example, if team 1 has 40 points and team 2 has 50, team 2 will be awarded 10 points. In this method of scoring, it is common to play to 100 points. I prefer the tournament-style scoring explained above because if one team has a really good or bad round, they are awarded 2 points and it doesn’t feel like all hope is lost for either team. But you know, do what you want.