What is cornhole?
Cornhole is a lawn game in which two sides take turns pitching fabric bags at a raised, angled board with a hole near the top. A bag through the hole scores three points and a bag that stays on the board scores one. The two sides cancel each other’s points in each frame, so only the difference counts, and the first to 21 wins. Boards are set 27 feet apart front edge to front edge, and the name comes from the whole dried corn the bags were originally filled with.
The game in one paragraph
Two boards face each other 27 feet apart. Two players or two teams pitch four bags each per frame, alternating throws, from beside the board opposite the one they are aiming at. Three points for a bag through the hole, one for a bag that comes to rest on the surface, nothing for a bag on the ground. Both sides then cancel: if you score six in a frame and your opponent scores four, you take two and they take none. Play continues until a side reaches 21.
That cancellation rule is what makes the game close. A side can out-throw its opponent every single frame and still take only one or two points a frame, which is why matches stay live far longer than the scoring suggests they should.
Why it is called cornhole
The bags were originally filled with whole dried corn kernels and the target is a hole, which is the entire derivation. It is descriptive rather than clever.
The fill has since changed. The American Cornhole Organization now specifies plastic resin beads, because whole corn rots, attracts vermin, absorbs moisture and gains weight as it does so. A corn-filled bag that has spent a summer in a shed no longer weighs what it did when it was made. Every bag sold for competition today is resin filled, so the name now describes a material the game has stopped using.
Where cornhole came from
The documented trail is shorter and better evidenced than most accounts of the game suggest, and it starts with a patent.
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1883 | Heyliger de Windt patents a bag-and-board game called Parlor Quoits, the earliest patented form of the game |
| Late 1880s | A Massachusetts toy manufacturer markets the game commercially as Faba Baga |
| 1974 | Popular Mechanics publishes plans for a game it calls bean-bag bull’s-eye |
| Late 1970s to early 1980s | The game spreads through Chicago and Northwest Indiana, where it is generally called bags |
| 1980s | Modern cornhole emerges on the west side of Cincinnati, near Ferguson Avenue, and spreads through Ohio and Kentucky |
| 2005 | The American Cornhole Organization is founded |
| 2015 | The American Cornhole League is founded; televised competition follows |
Two things are worth taking from that list. The first is that the game is older than its recent popularity implies, with a patent predating the twentieth century. The second is that the version played today, with these dimensions and this scoring, is a Cincinnati phenomenon of the 1980s that went national, which is why Ohio and Kentucky still treat it as a local game.
Accounts naming a medieval European inventor circulate widely online. No primary source for them has ever been produced, and none of the dated milestones above depends on that story being true.
The other names for it
What you call it depends largely on where you learned it. In Chicago and much of the Midwest it is bags. Elsewhere you will hear sack toss, bean bag toss, corn toss, baggo, or one of a dozen local names. They all describe the same game with the same board and the same 27 feet.
Two games are frequently sold and searched for alongside it and are not variants of it. Washers is pitched at a box or cup rather than a board, and ladder toss uses bolas thrown at a rung frame.
Common questions
What is cornhole?
- A lawn game in which two sides pitch fabric bags at a raised angled board with a hole near the top, from boards set 27 feet apart. A bag through the hole is three points, a bag resting on the board is one, and the two sides cancel each other’s points each frame so only the difference is scored. First to 21 wins.
Why is the game called cornhole?
- Because the bags were originally filled with whole dried corn and the target is a hole. Competition bags are now filled with plastic resin beads instead, since corn rots and changes weight as it absorbs moisture, so the name outlived the material.
Where did cornhole originate?
- The earliest documented form is a patent granted to Heyliger de Windt in 1883 for a bag-and-board game called Parlor Quoits. The modern game, with today’s dimensions and scoring, emerged on the west side of Cincinnati in the 1980s and spread from there through Ohio and Kentucky.
Is cornhole the same as bags?
- Yes. Bags is the usual name in Chicago and much of the Midwest, and it refers to the identical game. Sack toss, bean bag toss, corn toss and baggo are also the same game under different names.
How many players do you need for cornhole?
- Two at minimum, one at each board. The standard competitive format is four, playing as two teams of two, with partners standing at opposite boards for the whole match.
Is cornhole a sport?
- It is governed and played competitively as one. The American Cornhole Organization was founded in 2005 and the American Cornhole League in 2015, both publishing rule books and running ranked tournaments, and ACL events have been broadcast on US television.