Equipment

You’ll need a set of two cornhole boards. A cornhole board is a 2 ft x 4ft wooden surface with a 6 in hole towards the back of the board. The back of the board is elevated, giving the playing surface an angled top.

You’ll also need eight cornhole bags. Each team will throw four bags in each round. Cornhole bags are 6-inch x 6-inch square bags that weigh 1 lb each.

Once you add in the ACL Player App and ACL Fanzone apps for scoring, registration, side games, and more, you are ready to play!

Setup

To set up a game for play, set your cornhole boards 27 feet apart from front of board to front of board on flat ground. If you are playing indoors, be sure that you have a minimum of 12-foot ceilings!

Doubles

All games start with a coin toss or a bag spin (spin the bag on the board, whoever the seam of the bag points to wins!) to determine who goes first, who stands where, and who plays who. The winner of the coin toss gets to choose which team goes first. They also get to choose either: which teammate plays against which opponent OR where each teammate will throw from during the game.

Teammates will always throw from opposite boards but in the same lane (i.e. Player 1 throws at board #1 directly across from Player 2 at board #2, not diagonally). Opponents will throw against one another at the same board.

To begin, teams will alternate throwing one bag at a time from the same board until all eight bags have been thrown. Teams will score the round, and then the players on the other board will pick up the bags and repeat throwing the bags until all eight bags are thrown.

Singles

The game play for singles is the same as above. Instead of having a partner in your same lane, an individual player will just walk down the same lane of the board at the conclusion of a round. For example, a right handed player will throw Round #1 with their arm outside of the board, but then in Round #2 after walking down to the other board will throw Round #2 with their arm over the board.

• Every bag thrown in the hole = 3 points
• Every bag thrown on the board = 1 point
• Every bag thrown elsewhere = 0 points

From here, cornhole uses cancellation scoring. So, the higher-scoring team simply subtracts the lower-scoring team’s score from the round to determine the net score towards the overall score.

• I throw 3 bags in the hole and 1 bag on the board. For that round, I scored 10 points.
• In that same round, you threw 1 bag in the hole, 2 bags on the board, and 1 bag off the board. In that round, you scored 5 points.
• Therefore, at the conclusion of that round I would earn 10 - 5 = 5 points towards my overall score.

Classic Cornhole is played to 21 or more points at the conclusion of a round. You do not have to win by 2 and you do not need to hit 21 exactly!

Shootout Cornhole goes 10 rounds and the highest score at the end of 10 wins. This format can be good for beginners, when points are difficult to come by.

• Overstepping the line: No habitual line-steppers allowed! The bag must fully leave a player’s hand before their foot crosses the plane of the front of the board.
• Throw clock: Each player has 25 seconds to throw each bag.