Cornhole rules

1. Place the two boards 27 feet apart, front edge to front edge, with a half-inch tolerance.
2. Mark a pitcher's box at each end: a rectangle 3 feet wide by 4 feet long, running alongside the board. Its front edge is the foul line.
3. Two players or two teams of two. In a four-player game, partners stand at opposite ends and throw toward each other.
4. Each side has four bags of one color, so eight bags total.

The whole court works out to roughly 33 by 10 feet. If you do not have that, read regulation vs tailgate size before shortening it.

Cancellation scoring, the part that confuses everyone

A round is all eight bags — four from each side. At the end of the round you add up each side's points, and only the difference goes on the scoreboard. The lower-scoring side adds nothing.

• Red scores 5, blue scores 3 → red adds 2, blue adds 0.
• Red scores 6, blue scores 6 → nobody adds anything.
• Red scores 4, blue scores 0 → red adds 4.

This is why a round in which both teams throw brilliantly can move the score by one point, and why the game rewards denying points as much as scoring them. Which is exactly where blockers come in.

1. The team that scored in the previous round throws first in the next one.
2. If neither team scored — a canceled round — the team that threw first previously throws first again.
3. Players alternate throws within the round rather than throwing all four at once.
4. Play continues until one team has at least 21 at the end of a round.

Cancellation scoring means denying your opponent a point is worth exactly as much as scoring one. That single fact produces the whole strategic layer:

• The blocker. A bag deliberately stopped just in front of the hole, so your opponent cannot slide into it.
• The push. Your next bag hits your own blocker and knocks it in, scoring 3 and clearing the approach.
• The slide. A flat, fast bag that lands short and carries into the hole — what beginners are trying to do by throwing at the hole directly.

Those three shots need bags that behave differently, which is why competitive bags have a slick face and a grippy one. Full detail in best cornhole bags.

• A bag hanging over the hole. If it has not gone through, it is on the board: 1 point.
• A bag leaning against the board from the ground. Not on the board, and it touched the ground: 0.
• A bag knocked in by an opponent. It counts for whoever's bag it is, not whoever knocked it in.
• Stepping over the line. The front edge of the pitcher's box is the foul line. Enforce it or do not, but agree before the first round.

Buying advice for boards and bags: best cornhole boards.