What is pétanque?

Petanque is a convivial sport, often associated with warm moments with family and friends, played with steel boules and a cochonnet (French for piglet) or jack (As the the small wooden ball is called in English).

It can be played by players of all levels, from beginners to advanced, for fun or in competition.

The aim of pétanque is to place your boules closer to the jack than your opponents.

At 13 points, you've won!

Preparing for a game of pétanque

After each throw, go and check the distances from the jack, there might only be millimetres in it:

The best placed boule is said to "have the point" and is in the lead! It is the player or team that "does not have the point" that throw next. This team then throws its boules until it gains the point.

And if the player and their team run out of boules? The opposing team throw all the boules they have left. They are free to try and score as many points as possible… When all the boules have been thrown, the end is over.

And that's where it gets tricky!

During this end, one of the players may also have knocked the jack "dead", i.e. out of play. And when the jack is pushed too far, the end is void or scoreless. And that's when things get interesting! Whether each team still has boules to throw or, on the contrary, they have none left to play: the jack belongs to the last team to score or which won the coin toss. And if ever only one of the teams still has some boules, it scores as many points as it still has boules in hand!

Scoring points in petanque

When an end is finished, we count up the points! The team with the boule closest to the jack wins the end and can tot up points.

It scores one point for each boule better placed (i.e. closer to the jack) than the other team's. What if only one of your boules is closer to the jack than the closest of the opponents' boules? You win the end with 1 point! If 2 of your boules are closer: 2 points, and so on.

Next end: one of the players from the winning team draws the throwing circle round the jack and throws it from there to start the next end. The game continues. You keep playing more ends and adding up the points.

When one team reaches 13 points, they've won - and the game is over!

KISSING FANNY IN PETANQUE

When a team loses 13 to 0, the losers have to "kiss (the) Fanny", i.e. the bare bottom of a representation of a woman called Fanny, often a statuette or picture!