Bocce Ball Rules: How to Play, Score, and Win

Bocce ball rules are built around one simple idea: get your ball closer to a small target ball than the other side’s closest ball. Two sides, each with one, two, or four players, take turns rolling or lofting bocce balls down a court toward the pallino, and only the closer side scores each frame. This page covers setup, how a turn works, scoring with a full worked example, how a game ends, and the court-size and winning-score differences between backyard bocce, USBF court bocce, and international rules.

Bocce ball rules: how to play bocce in a nutshell

This hub walks through bocce the way most backyard and recreational players actually play it: two sides alternating throws, one point per ball closer than the opponent’s closest, first to 12 points wins. Where the United States Bocce Federation’s regulation court, the international CBI’s raffa and volo rules, and plain backyard play disagree - on court size, the winning score, and whether you may freely aim at the pallino - that is called out by name in Common variations below, rather than presented as if there is only one way to play.

Setting up the court and tossing the pallino

Bocce needs eight bocce balls in two colors (four per side), one smaller pallino as the target, and a long flat strip to throw down. A regulation court, per Special Olympics’ published dimensions, is 60 feet long and 12 feet wide, with a foul line marked 10 feet in from each end board and a center line crossing the court at the 30-foot midpoint. Backyard games skip the boards and the exact measurements and just use any open, reasonably flat ground of similar shape.

A coin toss decides which side tosses the pallino first. That side lofts or rolls the pallino down the court from behind its foul line; to count, it has to clear the center line and come to rest before the far foul line, inside what the diagram below marks as the valid pallino zone. Most rule sets give the tossing side up to three attempts to land it in that zone before control passes to the other side. Once the pallino is down, the same side rolls the first bocce ball.

How a turn works

After the pallino and the first ball are down, the other side rolls next, and from there turns are decided by position rather than a fixed order. Whichever side does not currently have the ball closest to the pallino is “outside” and keeps throwing - one ball at a time, underhand, from behind the foul line - until it either lands closer than the other side’s best ball or runs out of balls to throw. As soon as a side’s ball takes over as the closest, the other side steps back in and starts throwing again. A ball that strikes the end backboard without first touching the pallino or another ball is a dead ball and comes off the court; a ball knocked clean off the court is likewise out of play for that frame.

Because position - not a strict rotation - decides who throws next, a side can end up throwing several balls in a row if it keeps landing short, while the other side might only need one well-placed shot to reclaim the inside line. The frame ends once every ball from both sides has been thrown.

Scoring, with a worked example

Only one side scores in a frame, never both. Once all the balls are down, compare the single closest ball from each side: whichever side owns it scores one point for every one of its own balls that is closer to the pallino than the other side’s closest ball. Balls from the losing side score nothing that frame, no matter how many of them are on the court.

Say Team A tossed the pallino into the valid zone and rolled first. Team A’s opening ball stops 8 inches from the pallino. Team B’s first ball lands 5 inches away, so Team B is now closest and Team A must throw again. Team A’s second ball lands at 3 inches, retaking the inside line; Team B’s last ball lands at 9 inches, and Team A is out of balls. Comparing the two sides’ closest balls, Team A’s 3-inch ball beats Team B’s best at 9 inches. Team A’s other ball on the court, the 8-inch one, is also closer than Team B’s 9-inch ball, so it counts too. Team A scores 2 points for the frame; Team B scores 0, even with two balls still sitting on the court.

When the two closest balls from opposing sides look too close to call by eye, players measure with a tape or a length of string from the center of the pallino to the near edge of each contested ball, rather than guessing. Whichever measures shorter wins that comparison; a measurement that comes out truly equal scores nothing for that particular ball, though it does not erase a point already earned by a genuinely closer one.

How a game of bocce ends

A game ends the moment one side’s score reaches the agreed target at the close of a completed frame - 12 points for the recreational play this page describes. There is no requirement to win by a margin: reaching the target outright ends the game, though some backyard groups add a win-by-two house rule of their own. Play simply continues frame after frame, alternating which end tosses the pallino first, until someone crosses the line.

Common variations: backyard, USBF, and international rules

Bocce rule sets genuinely disagree on three things: how big the court is, how many points win, and whether you may deliberately aim at the pallino.

Backyard and casual recreational bocce, the version this page walks through, doesn’t insist on fixed dimensions - any reasonably flat, open strip of ground works - and games commonly run to 12 points, though 13, 15, and 21 all show up as house targets. Hitting the pallino on purpose, to move it or to knock an opponent’s ball away from it, is treated as ordinary strategy.

The United States Bocce Federation’s court bocce specifies a regulation court, with a recommended range from 75 by 10 feet up to 91 by 13 feet, and a minimum of 60 by 9 feet for a sanctioned event. Games are played to a single target of 8, 9, 10, 12, or 15 points, or as a best-of-three series to 7, with no win-by-two requirement. Knocking the pallino out of the court ends the frame immediately with no points scored, and play resumes from the opposite end.

International rules, published by the Confederation Boccistique Internationale (CBI) and covering the raffa and volo disciplines, use a larger court of roughly 90 by 13 feet. The winning score depends on team size: 16 points for four-player teams, and 12 points for two-player or one-player teams. CBI’s volo rules also require a thrower to call the target - a specific bocce ball or the pallino itself - before releasing a loft shot; a shot that happens to strike the pallino without having declared it doesn’t count as a legal hit, unlike backyard play where any contact with the pallino is simply part of the game.

Bocce fits naturally alongside other low-equipment lawn games. If you like the precision-over-power feel of rolling toward a target, shuffleboard asks for the same touch with a cue and a disc instead of a ball. For a faster-paced backyard option that still rewards a steady underhand toss, cornhole is worth having on hand, and pickleball covers the faster, paddle-and-net side of the same backyard game-night rotation.