A boule played out of turn is a boule that was played when a team mistakenly believed that they did not have the point, and it was therefore their turn to play. Consider the following situation.
Team A has the point. Bob, on Team B, plays a boule (B1). B1 gains the point, but Bob doesn’t realize that. Without leaving the circle, Bob judges that he has not gained the point, so throws a second boule (B2). Again, judging incorrectly that he has not gained the point, Bob throws his third boule (B3). Both teams then walk to the head to assess the situation. What they discover is that Bob had gained the point with B1. That means that B2 and B3 were thrown “out of turn”.
At this point, the question is of course— What do we do now? A variety of answers have been proposed.
1. The boule was thrown “contrary to the rules”
There is no FIPJP rule that specifically covers boules thrown out-of-turn. What players and umpires usually come up with is that the boules were thrown “contrary to the rules”. They reason thus—
- Article 16 says that “it is the team that does not hold the point that plays.”
- Since Bob WAS holding the point when he played boules B2 and B3, he broke the rule in Article 16.
- Since Bob broke a rule when he played boules B2 and B3, B2 and B3 must have been “played contrary to the rules”.
- Article 24 contains a rule about what to do when a boule is played contrary to the rules. Therefore, the rule in Article 24 is what we should use.
Article 24 says that when we discover that a boule has been played contrary to the rules, we should apply an “advantage rule”.
- The offended team may choose to leave everything where it is, and carry on with the game. Or—
- The offended team may choose to declare each boule that was thrown out-of-turn to be dead, and to put every ball that was illegally moved back in its original location, if its original location was marked.
Note that the offended team— not the umpire— decides what to do with a boule thrown out-of-turn. Note also that a boule thrown out-of-turn is not automatically dead— the offended team can choose to declare it dead, but they can also choose to leave it where it is.
The bottom line for Bob is that Team A is probably going to choose the second option, and declare B2 and B3 to be dead.
The rule is straight-forward, but it can be emotionally unsatisfying, especially when several boules are involved. When Team B throws two or three boules out-of-turn, players begin to wonder— Where was Team A when Team B was throwing all of these illegal boules? Surely Team A must have realized that Team B had the point! Shouldn’t they have informed Team B? Isn’t Team A at least partly at fault, for knowing that Team B had the point, but sitting around and watching Team A throw all of these illegal boules and saying nothing?
These suspicions are almost always groundless. In cases like this, as often as not the players on Team A said nothing because they didn’t have enough time to carefully assess the situation, or they really did not realize (or were not sure about) who had the point. Still, we often have a gut-level feeling that Team A must somehow share the guilt, and it is unfair or harsh to punish Team B so severely. This has prompted proposals for other ways of dealing with multiple boules thrown out-of-turn.
2. The boule was NOT thrown “contrary to the rules”
In 2008 Petanque New Zealand (PNZ) published rules interpretations saying that a boule thrown out of turn should not be considered to have been thrown contrary to the rules. In 2012 John Degueldre, Director of Umpiring for Petanque New Zealand, followed up by issuing the following ruling.
Boules played out of turn are not considered as an infringement to the rules [i.e. as "boules thrown contrary to the rules"] but indeed as a mistake. Players making such a mistake penalise themselves by reducing or losing the boule advantage. In conclusion, players do not incur any penalty, and boule(s) are valid and stay in place. But it is still the player or team not holding the point that must play the next boule.
The practical effect of this interpretation is that, after it is discovered that one or more boules have been thrown out-of-turn, everything is left where it is, and the game carries on.
It’s true that playing a boule out-of-turn is usually a mistake— often a newbie mistake, sometimes a result of lazy playing— and so shouldn’t be treated too harshly. But a blanket no-fault policy may be excessively tolerant. Even a mistakenly-thrown boule can have consequences. If you point a boule right in front of the jack, or right in front of a boule that I was planning to shoot, you’ve changed the situation on the ground in your favor. Saying “Oops, my mistake,” doesn’t change the fact that your boule has just created a real problem for me. My sense of fairness tells me that your throw really should be undone.
I think that PNZ came to the same conclusion. As of the 2021 version of its rules, it now interprets Article 24 in the standard FIPJP way (position #1).
3. Only the LAST boule was thrown “contrary to the rules”
The NJBB (the Dutch national petanque federation) agrees that a boule thrown out-of-turn has been thrown contrary to the rules, but its rules interpretation guidelines specify an unusual way of applying Article 24.
Every team has a duty to investigate and must ensure that a player who is about to play belongs to the team team whose turn it really is to play. … If the opposing team has had the opportunity to object and has not removed from play the boule that was thrown contrary to the rules, one may assume that they have agreed to leave the boule(s) in question. Thus, the rule does not automatically apply retroactively if the error is discovered at a later time.
The NJBB position is that when Team A didn’t object to Bob throwing B2, Team A must have implicitly (and without telling anyone) invoked Article 24’s advantage rule, and must (without telling anyone) have chosen the first option— to leave everything untouched. After it is discovered that B3 was thrown out-of-turn, then Team A may explicitly invoke Article 24’s advantage rule and choose to disqualify B3. But it can do nothing about B2 because it has already implicitly agreed not to disqualify B2.
In effect, the NJBB rule is that when it is discovered that Team B has thrown multiple boules out-of-turn, Team A can disqualify only the last one.
This is obviously an attempt to find a minimally punitive way to handle multiple boules thrown out-of-turn. And I think that it would be acceptable for the NJBB simply and arbitrarily to rule that when one team throws multiple boules out-of-turn, the other team can disqualify only the last one. (Most of the rules of most games are completely arbitrary.) But the NJBB’s feeble attempt to rationalize its ruling is absurd. Not realizing that a boule has been thrown out-of-turn is not the same thing as (a) realizing that a boule has been thrown out-of-turn, then (b) making a conscious choice to choose one, rather than the other, of the two options offered by Article 24’s advantage rule, and then (c) concealing that recognition and that decision from the opposing team.
The bottom line
The bottom line, I think, is that while the standard FIPJP position (position #1) can sometimes leave us emotionally dissatisfied, there is no other position that is compatible with the current FIPJP rules and obviously better.
The lesson for all of us is therefore—
You can’t count on the opposing team always to point out that you have, or might have gained the point. The responsibility for claiming the point is yours, and you can’t expect your opponents to do your job for you.
Before you play a boule, always make sure that you know where the point lies, and that it really is your team’s turn to play. Or be prepared to deal with the consequences.
Why boules thrown out-of-turn cause so much confusion
It is difficult to discuss boules thrown out-of-turn, because players commonly believe (incorrectly) that a boule thrown out-of-turn is automatically dead, or that an umpire will automatically rule the boule to be dead. They believe this because of the extremely confusing way that Article 24 is written. First Article 24 says “any boule thrown contrary to the rules is dead.” Then it says “Oh wait, I take it back. The boule isn’t dead; the offended team gets to apply an advantage rule.” The FIPJP should be ashamed of itself for the way that Article 24 is written.
Dealing with a forgotten boule
Players and umpires sometimes invoke the concept of a boule thrown out-of-turn when dealing with a forgotten boule. That’s a mistake. See our post on Dealing with a forgotten boule.
Extensive revision of this post
This post was extensively revised on July 13, 2022 in response to comments on the first version by Michael, Bruce Whitehill, and Niek. Michael and Bruce pointed out the difficulties in the 2012 PNZ position, and especially challenged the statement (now removed) that “A boule thrown out-of-turn hurts the team that threw it and does no harm to the opposing team.” Niek called my attention to the NJBB’s unusual interpretation of Article 24. My thanks go out to all of them for their help in making this post better.
The rule requiring enclosed footwear has been in place in many national federations for a decade or more, but it first appeared in the FIPJP rules in 2016. Since then, it has attracted the attention of players, who have raised a lot of questions about the rule. Players like to play in sandals, and the most frequently asked question is “Are shoes like these allowed?”, submitted along with a photo of shoes that are closed around the toes and heels, but open elsewhere.
The Rules of Petanque 