Shove ha'penny also known in ancestral form as shoffe-grote ['shove-groat

Groat

Groat or Fuppence is the traditional name of an English silver coin worth four English pence, and also a Scottish coin originally worth fourpence, with later issues being valued at eightpence and one shilling.-Name:...

' in Modern English], slype groat ['slip groat'], and slide-thrift, is a pub game

Pub games

Pub games are games which are or were played in pubs, bars, inns, and taverns, particularly traditional games played in English pubs. Most are indoor games, though some are played outdoors Pub games are games which are or were played in pubs, bars, inns, and taverns, particularly traditional games...

 in the shuffleboard

Shuffleboard

Shuffleboard, more precisely deck shuffleboard, and also known as shuffle-board, shovelboard, shovel-board and shove-board [archaic], is a game in which players use broom-shaped paddles to push weighted pucks, sending them gliding down a narrow and elongated court, with the purpose of...

 family, played predominantly in the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

. Two players or teams compete against one another using coins or discs on a tabletop board.

The board

Shove ha'penny is played on a small, rectangular, smooth board

Board game

A board game is a game which involves counters or pieces being moved on a pre-marked surface or "board", according to a set of rules. Games may be based on pure strategy, chance or a mixture of the two, and usually have a goal which a player aims to achieve...

 usually made of wood or stone. A number of parallel lines or grooves run horizontally across this board, separated by about one-and-a-half coin diameters. The spaces between the lines (usually nine) are called the "beds". Five British Half Penny coins (now obsolete pre-decimalisation coinage) or similarly-sized coins or metal discs are placed one-by-one at one end of the board slightly protruding over the edge and are shoved forward toward scoring lines, with a blow from the palm of the hand.

In the humorously opinionated (and exceedingly rare) book "The Shove Ha'penny Board Displayed" (Christophers, London 1934), author Trelawney Dayrell-Reed asserts that the best boards are made of unvarnished walnut or mahogany. In parts of South West England

South West England

South West England is one of the regions of England defined by the Government of the United Kingdom for statistical and other purposes. It is the largest such region in area, covering and comprising Bristol, Gloucestershire, Somerset, Dorset, Wiltshire, Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. ...

, primarily Dorset

Dorset

Dorset , is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town is Dorchester which is situated in the south. The Hampshire towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch joined the county with the reorganisation of local government in 1974...

 and Hampshire

Hampshire

Hampshire is a county on the southern coast of England in the United Kingdom. The county town of Hampshire is Winchester, a historic cathedral city that was once the capital of England. Hampshire is notable for housing the original birthplaces of the Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force...

, the board is made of slate and lubricated with arrowroot

Arrowroot

Arrowroot, or obedience plant , Bermuda arrowroot, araru, ararao, is a large perennial herb found in rainforest habitats...

 powder or French chalk

French chalk

French chalk is a form of steatite.As an arist's material the term is used by Max Doerner in his book "The Materials of the Artist" where he describes a calcium carbonate used to make traditional gesso primer, to be painted over...

, which makes the polished ha'pennies glide with a very light touch. The five-coin turns are alternate and the coins are cleared between turns so there is no nudging of opponents' coins. Indeed, both players use the same coins, and it is a serious mistake to move the coins back to the bottom of the board before one's opponent has had a chance to check the scoring, as they may be distracted by drinking their pints and so suspect one of cheating. Sometimes teams compete, playing in sequence, but scoring is as for single players. Experienced players (including the aforesaid Dayrell-Reed) conclude that merely placing the coins between the lines is too easy so that to score they must be placed almost exactly in the centre of the bed. An exact placement by a single shove, rather than by nudging into position by subsequent shots, is called a 'flopper' and will command applause, especially if it is a winning shot. In competition games a scoring placement is judged by a referee. In times past considerable sums could be wagered on games of shove ha'penny and influencing the referee – whether actual or suspected – could result in sudden and violent confrontations. Because of this some public houses have a strong antipathy to games of shove ha'penny and will only allow trusted locals to play, sometimes keeping the board in a back room and denying its existence to strangers. This is particularly common in the case of the 'Dorset long board', making it difficult even for a shove ha'penny enthusiast to ascertain how many pubs still have this archaic board.

The Dorset long board is a somewhat different game, employing a much larger board, marked with circles instead of horizontal beds. This board can be viewed in a British Pathe newsreel "Tippit and Shove Halfpenny" (see www.britishpathe.com/recordphp?id=37692 ). Video of the more common modern game can be seen on YouTube by searching for "Indoor League" and seeking the finals of the shove ha'penny competition from this 1970s vintage Yorkshire TV show devoted to pub games. Some form of the game was the 'game of shufflegroat' at which King Henry VIII

Henry VIII of England

Henry VIII was King of England from 21 April 1509 until his death. He was Lord, and later King, of Ireland, as well as continuing the nominal claim by the English monarchs to the Kingdom of France...

 is legendarily alleged to have lost large sums to his more dubious drinking companions: 'The privy purse expenses of 1532 show that in January Lord William won £9 of the King at "shovilla bourde," and "My lord of Rocheforde won of the King at shovilla bourde and betting at the game £45." In the following month Lord Rocheford won £41, 12s. 6d. of the King at the same pastime'.

The game

Player shoves five coins

COinS

ContextObjects in Spans, commonly abbreviated COinS, is a method to embed bibliographic metadata in the HTML code of web pages. This allows bibliographic software to publish machine-readable bibliographic items and client reference management software to retrieve bibliographic metadata. The...

 or metal discs (Ha'pennies) up the board in each turn. To prepare each coin to be pushed, the player positions the Ha'penny at the front of the board with the rear of the coin just sticking over the front edge of the board. Any part of the hand can then be used to shove the coin up the board. If a coin does not actually reach the first line on the board, that coin does not count as having been played and can be shoved again.

At the end of the turn each coin that is completely within a 'bed' (between two horizontal lines and within the bordering vertical lines) scores a point for that player in that bed. The points are scored with chalk marks in the squares at either end of the bed on the edge of the board, one player owning the right side, the other, the left. The aim is to get three chalk marks in each of the squares - three scores in each of the nine beds. However, once three scores have been made in a bed, any further scores in that bed will be given to the opponent instead, unless the opponent already has three scores in the bed. The one exception to this is the winning point which must be scored properly by the winning player, not given away.

Players will attempt to cause a coin to knock onto one or more previously pushed ha'pennies in an effort to improve their position as well as trying to make a score with the ha'penny being played. A little thought is also required – it is not usually a good move to score the third coin in a bed until towards the end of a hand, so as to set up coins in positions that will increase the chances that later coins will score by coming up from below and stopping behind the earlier coins. This is particularly true in the "progressive" variant of the game, where, after a player's hand of five coins is complete, any scoring coins are recorded and then pulled back to be replayed in the same turn. A player may try to place early coins not only to promote scoring using later coins, but also in such a way as to be pushed by the later coins into positions where further scoring opportunities may be created. Thus, in this version of the game, a very gifted (and/or lucky) player could theoretically win the game in a single turn.

The game has its own body of specialized jargon, providing a host of colorful names for particular scoring opportunities, shots and board features, as well as special rules of etiquette. Trelawney Dayrell-Reed (see above) asserts (tongue in cheek) that the appropriate penalty for someone unfortunately wetting the board with a drink ring (and thus compromising it's playing surface) is to be "painfully destroyed without benefit of clergy." (Dayrell-Reed, at 34).

The game has also made it to online video game platforms like smartphones like Windows Phone 7

Windows Phone 7

Windows Phone is a mobile operating system developed by Microsoft, and is the successor to its Windows Mobile platform, although incompatible with it. Unlike its predecessor, it is primarily aimed at the consumer market rather than the enterprise market...

External links

• "Shove Ha'penny Rules", MastersGames.com