Article 6 says –
One of the players of the team that won the draw chooses the starting point and draws or places a circle on the ground such that the feet of each of the players can fit entirely inside it. However, a drawn circle may not measure less than 35cm or more than 50cm in diameter.
A common question about this rule is –
I can’t fit my feet inside the circle that was drawn by the opposing team. What should I do? Can I redraw the circle myself?
The answer is NO, you can’t redraw the circle if it was drawn by the opposing team. The proper procedure is to point out that the circle is too small for your feet, and to ask the opposing team to redraw the circle.
Don’t be shy. 35 centimeters, the minimum legal size for a drawn circle, is about 14 inches. Unless you have unusually large feet, a circle that is too small to hold your feet was probably illegally small to begin with. If that is an issue, you can always take out your tape measure and measure it.
Remember… When deciding whether or not your feet fit inside the circle, you must be standing with your feet together, side by side.
There is a proper procedure for redrawing the circle.
- Do NOT extend the old circle outward in one direction, so that it becomes an oval rather than a circle. The new circle should be as close to a proper circular circle as you can make it.
- Draw the new circle so that (if it was drawn precisely) it would share exactly one point with the old circle, the point that was closest to the jack. Here is a diagram.
When the circle is redrawn, note that it doesn’t have to be redrawn so that it is a full 50cm in diameter. It only has to be big enough so that you can stand with feet together, side by side, and they fit entirely within the new circle.
The Rules of Petanque 