Fun With Shuffleboard Stencils

Shuffleboard may not quite be the great American pastime, and it is highly unlikely that kids and teenagers will be sporting merchandise of their favourite shuffleboard players anytime soon, but the game does have a solid following in the United States and certain other countries since its revival in the mid-1980s. Hardly a game requiring considerable physical intensity or stamina, shuffleboard is more appropriately presented as laid back, pleasant diversion, something to do on a lazy afternoon to pass the time with friends. The fact that you don't have to have ripped muscles or a body in peak condition to enjoy shuffleboard has made the game particularly popular among older individuals, and is a game selection in many senior citizen communities.

There are a number of ways to set up a shuffleboard game even if you don't have a professional court, the easiest of which is to purchase a set of shuffleboard stencils, so that you can have a game anywhere you can find a flat, paintable surface large enough for a court. This includes parking lot pavement and other wide open concrete areas. Standard official shuffleboard courts are between 39 to 52 feet long and about 6 feet wide, but smaller stencils for more compact games are available on the market. You will also need shuffleboard playing equipment, which consists of a couple of broom-like paddles with prongs at the end, called cues, and eight weighted discs, called pucks, to play.

Laying out the stencil for shuffleboard will require some masking tape or other adhesive to hold the stencils in place, because shuffleboard stencils typically come in three separate pieces, which are made to be set beside each other to form the court. Make sure that you brush away any dirt and debris from the playing area both before laying the stencils and after painting the court, as you'll want to have as smooth a surface as possible for optimum play conditions.

The court is built with two sides that mirror each other, so games can proceed back and forth between the two sides instead of having to deal with the tedium of having to take the pucks back to a single starting point. Each side is comprised of a baseline, behind which players will push the pucks, the "10-Off" area, where the pucks begin their glide, several scoring areas, which will only score on the other side from where the players hit, and a deadline, the farther one of which must be passed for the puck to be considered in play. If a puck ends up on the other side's "10-Off" area, the player actually loses 10 points. There are a number of other ways to lose points by penalty, including hitting an opponent's puck instead of your own, and not hitting from behind the baseline. The winner is the first person to reach 50, 75 or 100 points, depending on what the players decide.

All in all, shuffleboard is a delightful game that can be played practically anywhere with the proper equipment, including an indispensable shuffleboard stencil to set up that court wherever you want.