Horseshoe Game Rules

Jim Harris: My name is Jim Harris, Secretary-Treasurer of the Alabama Horseshoe Pitchers Association. I am teaching you how to pitch horseshoes and now I want to talk about the basic rules of horseshoes. The detail rules are located in the NHPA Bylaws book and the NHPA playing rules guideline book, but I want to talk about the 40 foot and 30 foot pitchers. We have a 40 foot platform here where the 40 foot pitchers pitches. The objective here is to deliver your horseshoe, but do not get onto the foul line. The 30 foot pitcher would come down here to this line, the imaginary state and he would deliver the horseshoe, not get on the foul line again. Now, I might mention that 40 foot pitchers are the open class men at 19 and older. The 30 foot pitchers are the elder men, 70 plus years and the women, and the junior boys and girls and in a normal game of horseshoes, we pitch 50 shoes. The person with the most points after the 50 shoes is the winner. I would like to talk about now how to score the shoes. One ringer is three points, two ringers, if a person gets two ringers it is six points, if you and your opponent both get two ringers each it would be we call that four dead, it would two ringers each and no score. If I get two ringers and my opponent gets one ringer then it's called three ringers and I get three points. We score the single point if it's within six inches of the stake and that is the basic rule of horseshoes. Next we are going to talk about the basic equipment used.