Yard game etiquette and house rules

1. Which rulebook. “ACL rules.” That is the whole sentence, and for eight of the games we cover there is a real one to name.
2. What you have changed. Playing to 15 instead of 21 to keep it short is fine. Not mentioning it is not.
3. How close calls get decided. A rope, a phone camera, or one named person. Decide before there is a close call, because afterwards there is no neutral answer.
4. Whether anyone is on a handicap, and what it is. See below — there is a right way to do this.
5. When the game ends. A score, a time, or a number of rounds. Games that run out of energy rather than finishing are remembered as games that went wrong.

1. The person who is losing calls the close ones

Counter-intuitive and it works. It removes any suspicion of self-interest, and in practice people call against themselves more often than not when handed the responsibility.

2. Measure rather than argue

Bocce ends most frames with two balls that look identical from standing height, which is precisely why two of the sets we cover publish a measuring rope in the box. It is the least glamorous specification on this site and the one that prevents the most arguments. Horseshoes has the published equivalent: a shoe only counts as closest if it is within six inches of the stake.

3. Winner racks, loser chooses

Borrowed from pool and it transfers perfectly. Whoever won resets the equipment; whoever lost picks the next game or the next handicap. It distributes the tedious job and gives the losing player something to decide.

4. Nobody stands past a target

Not etiquette so much as the one safety convention every throwing game shares. Every game here has a miss condition and a miss goes past the target — so nothing and nobody should be there. It matters most with horseshoes, at up to 2 pounds 10 ounces of steel.

This is what actually ends afternoons, and no rulebook covers it. Three conventions, in the order we would reach for them:

• Split them across teams rather than handicapping them. In a doubles game, the strongest player and the weakest player are partners. Nobody has to be told they are being helped.
• Use the published distance options. As above — foul lines and throwing ranges exist for this.
• Change the game. A game with a low ceiling levels a group automatically. Molkky's exactly-50 rule with a reset to 25 makes a big lead an active disadvantage; nothing else here does that. See yard game scoring systems.

For a structured competition where the stakes are higher and the rules need to be firmer, how to run a backyard tournament. And for the one game here with no published rules at all, flag football rules for a backyard.