Sjoelen

Sjoelen is a traditional table shuffleboard game originating in the Netherlands.

The game is played on a long, narrow, tabletop board called a sjoelbak, which has four slots or gates through which players attempt to slide thirty discs (also called pucks or stones) in three sub-turns.

The game has similarities with bagatelle, curling and shove ha'penny...[1] Since 1977, sjoelen has been a competitive sport (also known as sjoelsport), driven by the Algemene Nederlandse Sjoelbond (ANS).

One end is open, for the player to slide the discs, and has a bar joining the top of the side pieces to denote the start line of the playing area.

At the other end, there is a gate line with four slots through which players attempt to slide the discs.

Sjoelbakken are made of wood and mass-produced boards are marketed by, among others, Schilte, Heemskerk Sport, Engelhart and Homas.

The most common requires a player to slide thirty discs down the sjoelbak with the aim of getting them through the slots and into the boxes at the far end of the board.

[1] The basic scoring rule is that each disc that is wholly past the front of a slot will count for the number of points for that slot - from left to right, 2, 3, 4, 1.

[1] In some competitions (including the knock-out stages of the Sjoelen World Cup[3]), the 20-2 format is used.

This variant requires a player to slide only 20 discs down the sjoelbak and they have just two sub-turns.

Players from fourteen countries competed in the 2023 Sjoelen World Cup.

[4] This increased to eighteen countries in the 2024 Sjoelen World Cup.

[5] Teams from Syria have participated in previous Sjoelen World Cups.

There is a sjoelen club in Mallorca, Spain and the sport is also played in Argentina.

[12] Since then, a competition has taken place every two years, except during the coronavirus pandemic, which delayed the 2021 event to September 2023.

In May 2024, a catch-up competition (to make up for the coronavirus delay) was played in Bischheim, France.

No adaptations are made to the game itself in Para Sjoelen, but in South Korea, special electronic boards are used that help with adjudication and scoring.