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How to Play Bocce
While lawn bowling is usually a semi-rural sport, requiring a pretty good-sized expanse of grass, bocce became an urban sport in Italy, often played on city streets. As a result, the bocce court has a rather hard surface of packed dirt or gravel and it's rectangular, 60 to 80 feet long and 12 feet wide. A wooden barrier, 4 1/2 inches high, surrounds the court.
An interesting feature of bocce is that shots can be played off the side boards and the backstop. Thus, the sport has some similarities to table shuffleboard and to billiards.
There can be one, two, or four players per side. Each side has four bolls. A player, chosen by lot, rolls a small ball, the pallina, which becomes the target. That player then rolls a second ball, attempting to get as close to the pallina as possible.
Progress of play is rather unusual. The second side bowls until one of its bolls is closer to the pallina than the ball rolled by the first player, or until all four bolls have been used. The first side then takes its turn.
When both sides have bowled all of their bolls, the side with the ball closest to the pallina gets a point. A point is also awarded for any other ball from that side that is closer to the pallina than any ball rolled by the opponents. Thus, only one side can score in a frame, and that side can get up to 4 points. The first side to score 16 points wins.
Among better players, bocce is a strategical game. Since the pallina can be moved by a shot, a player can often score by knocking the pallina closer to bolls previously rolled by his or her side. On the other hand, a player whose side already has bolls in scoring position may choose to place a ball in front of the pallina to keep it from being moved.
In standard bocce, the bolls must be rolled. There's a variant known as raffa, in which the ball can be lofted toward the targets. A third variation, volo, is played like raffa except that the players use bolls made of brass, rather than synthetic plastic.
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