Sjoelbak - Dutch Shuffleboard

Available to hire Island wide across the Isle of Wight. Minimum order value applies. Sjoelbak (pronounced 'shew-buk') is a variation of Shuffleboard which originated in Tudor England and links itself through influence from games such as billiards, pinball, bagatelle, skeeball and even miniature golf. The game has been big in Holland since the late 19th century and has grown in popularity in both Belgium and more recently, Germany. And now we are starting to see its integration over here. It's a great family game, perfect for your events at home as well a great team building game for work events. The Sjoelbak is also seeing growing popularity as a wedding day option and perfect for entertaining your guests.

The aim of the game

Players step up to the 2m long board one at a time. With a set of 30 slightly concave wooden discs they aim them, from behind the start bar, one at a time to slide down the board in an attempt to get the discs through the 4 arches numbered 1 to 4 at the other end. Sound easy? It's not.

The arches are just wide enough to receive the discs making it a challenge to aim precisely. As more discs are played, the ones that haven't made it into compartments increase the challenge to get new discs into the compartments. Each set of discs that makes it into all 4 compartments doubles the score for those discs. See example below for details.

The Rules

Players have three rounds to aim all the available discs that haven't made it fully into the compartments. The first round plays the full set of 30 discs. After the first round any discs still not in compartments are taken back to the start for the second round and then the process is repeated for the third and final play.

After each round of scoring the discs that have made it into compartments are stacked at the back of the compartments, first four high, then in piles of 3, each pile diagonally stacked from the one before it. Scoring is based on the numbers above the arches and after each player has taken their three turns the highest score wins. If a player manages to get all 30 discs into compartments before the end of their third round, their play finishes early.

Discs in-play

Once a disc has made it fully under the start bar it is considered to be in-play and should remain untouched until the current players next round. The only exceptions to this are as follows,

1. A disc enters into a compartment other than through its corresponding arch
2. A disc exits a compartment other than through its corresponding arch
3. A disc leaves the game board
4. A disc returns in full under the start bar

In all four examples the offending disc is removed from play until the person playing takes their second or third round.

Scoring

The 4 compartments are labelled with 1 to 4 pins that defines its scoreable value. For each set of four discs, one in each compartment, score is doubled to 20 points. So, 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 and then doubled. Any remaining discs that are not part of a set as described above are scored individually to the amount shown on their compartment arch.

A disc is counted as being 'in a compartment' when it is fully behind the front face of the arch it has passed through. An ariel view can confirm this or for any disputes, if a flat surface is run along the front of the arches and the disc moves then it was not fully in and doesn't count.

The maximum available score is 148 which consists of 7 x discs in each compartment giving 140 points plus the remaining two discs in compartment 4 giving a final 8 points.

Example

Jon has scored after three rounds as follows,

Compartment 2 - 7 Discs

Compartment 3 - 5 Discs

Compartment 4 - 8 Discs

Compartment 1 - 9 Discs

This gives Jon 5 full sets of 1 disc in each compartment to score 100 points with the remaining discs scored as follows,

2 discs from compartment 2 scores 4 points

3 discs from compartment 4 scores 12 points

and 4 discs from compartment 1 scores 4 points.

Jon's final score is 120 points.