This browser has no WebGL2 context, so the court cannot be drawn.
This browser has no WebGL2 context, so the court cannot be drawn.
Horseshoe pitching, played at the dimensions in the NHPA Official Rules, Regulations, Guidelines and Specifications (adopted 16 July 2006, revised 1 January 2024). This is an independent reimplementation. It is not published by, endorsed by or affiliated with the National Horseshoe Pitchers Association.
The shoe turns flat as it flies, and it has to arrive open end first. That is why the named techniques are quarters: the shoe is gripped with its opening ninety degrees off the line, so the totals that work are 1¼ and 2¼ from one grip and ¾, 1¾ and 2¾ from the other. The 1¼ and the 1¾ are the two the literature calls the championship turns.
Nothing here presets the arrival. The grip fixes how the shoe leaves your hand, your spin and the time of flight fix how far it turns, and whether it arrives open end first falls out of the two. Change the length and the same spin gives a different turn count.
RULE 3, Section B.2(a): “A ringer is a live shoe that comes to rest while encircling the stake. A straightedge touching either the points or any part of the heel calks of the shoe must clear (not touch) the stake in order for it to be declared a ringer.” A ringer is 3 points. A shoe that is not a ringer but comes to rest six inches or closer to the stake is 1 point, and that includes a leaner. Further out than six inches and it is worth nothing.
So scoring depends on how the shoe is turned as well as where it is — which is why the turn is the whole game.
Opposing ringers cancel one for one and score nothing. Only one contestant scores in an inning. The calls, from GUIDELINE 2, are: one point, two points, one ringer three points, one ringer four points, two dead one point, two dead three points, two ringers six points, no score, two dead no score and four dead. A per-inning score of five is impossible.
Watch the catch: two dead ringers allow the closest shoe ONE point, where an inning with no ringers at all would have allowed two.
Nothing cancels; each contestant scores what their own shoes are worth. A contestant may score 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 or 6 in an inning.
The stakes are 40 ft apart, measured from the front of each stake at platform level. They are 1 in in diameter, stand 14–15 in above the platforms, and lean 3 in toward the opposite end — so the stake you are aiming at leans toward you, at 78° to the horizontal in the rulebook’s own Stake Detail drawing. The pit is up to 72 in long and 36 in wide, and a shoe that touches anything outside it is a foul shoe (RULE 5, Section B.2c) and is removed.
The stake distance never changes; the foul line does. Open Men and Senior Men observe the 37 ft line, Open and Senior Women, Elder Men and Junior Girls the 27 ft line, and Cadets the 20 ft line.
No more than 2 lb 10 oz, no wider than 7¼ in, no longer than 7⅝ in, no taller than 1 in with its calks down, and its opening may not exceed 3½ in — measured, the rulebook is precise about this, on a line parallel to and ¾ in inward from a straightedge touching the tips of the shoe points. So the rule constrains the throat, not the mouth, and says nothing at all about the gap between the tips.
The NHPA fixes a bounding box, a weight ceiling, one throat width and the court. It fixes nothing about the shoe’s outline inside that box, its mass distribution, the clay, the air, or the pitcher. Every one of those is this app’s own choice and is listed, item by item, in CREDITS.txt. In particular there is no published figure for the clay’s stiffness, for any coefficient of restitution, or for release speed or angle — the only flight number the sport publishes is the arc’s apex, 7 to 10 ft, and this app’s release is solved to hit it rather than picked.
The NHPA also publishes no ringer-percentage class boundaries: a Class is a relative seeding bucket of six to twelve pitchers, re-cut for each tournament. The opponent levels below are labelled with their own measured percentage, against achieved figures — Alan Francis won the 2026 world title at 89.37%, holds the tournament record at 90.26%, and the men’s national top 100 begins at 48.48%.
Measured by this app’s own harness over 900 simulated shoes each: Novice 10.4%, Club 28.7%, A class 50.2%, Champion 80.6%. A class sits just above the men’s national top-100 cutoff of 48.48%; Champion sits at the bottom of the championship band.
Space pitch · ← → line · ↑ ↓ length · [ ] spin · P pit view · N new game · ? this panel · Esc close
A change takes effect on the next new game.