Information

Only someone from Ohio would not laugh when they heard the word 'cornhole'. Despite its bad name for a game, the game is quickly becoming a staple at backyard parties, picnics, and charity events. The game is known in other areas of the country as baggo, bean bag toss, or just bags. Whatever you call the cornhole game, most players find themselves in love with the sport from the moment they start playing. It doesn't matter if you are old or young, fat or skinny, or male or female, anyone can play and excel at the simple game. Not only that, you can still hold a conversation while you are playing. The history of the game is somewhat unknown, but it is widely circulated that it was started by farmers in Ohio. In talking with people, it seems that most remember playing the game (or a variation) when they were younger. The point of the game is this. You place two cornhole platforms 30 feet away from each other and have two competitors alternate tossing cornhole bags at the opposing platform. Each player throws four bags a piece (4 colors to one team and 4 to the other) until you've thrown all eight bags. The scoring is pretty simple, a bag that's thrown in the hole is worth 3 points and the ones lying on the board are worth 1. You tally all the points on the board and the team with the most points gets to add the difference to their score. You can choose to attempt to build the platforms themselves or you can go the easy route and purchase them at an ecommerce shop. Regulation boards are 4 feet x 2 feet and are made with 1/2"-3/4" plywood. The hole is a 6" circle cut at the top of the board. A popular alternative to the regulation platform is the cornhole boards that collapse for simple traveling. In some areas of the country, namely Chicago, it is popular to use smaller boards measuring 3'x2'. As you probably guessed, a smaller target makes for harder game play. But, you do gain something with the more difficult playing conditions, these boards are much easier to put away in the back of your car for easy travel from tournament to tournament. The bags measure 6"x6" and are made with duck cloth and filled with 1 pound of feed corn. Now, ever year there are more tournaments being announced and sponsored by various organizations. Anything from various cornhole associations, to bars, to charity events. No matter who sponsors it though, you can count on some big draws. In Ohio, the largest cornhole tournament was even televised and had thousands of entries from people wanting to showcase their dominance. The tournaments tend to get very good draws because they are sometimes the only opportunity for a player to test his skill against others that play with the same frequency as them. It has always been hard to see how good you really were when you're only playing with your neighbors on your homemade cornhole sets. These organized tournaments allow players to measure themselves against the best and most talented players in the area. Product developers have come to the rescue and met the desires of the fast growing sport. Ask any avid player and they can tell you that there are two problems with corn filled bags, they can't get wet and they are prone to critter invasions. Thankfully, a company has identified this as a problem and developed the weather resistant cornhole bags which are filled with plastic pellets as opposed to corn. To make things easy on yourself and to save you from getting into unnecessary fights, some companies are developing some scoring systems that will help keep score for you. Even though you see more and more people playing the game, the main draw seems to be the easy going nature and relaxing pace of the game. In a high tech world, the game of cornhole is very low tech. .