Shuffleboard Puck Shapes, Weights, and Sizes

Ya know… We spend a lot of time discussing shuffleboard tables and their components. We could spend all day talking about wood types and the best way to finish a playing surface. We’re passionate about shuffleboard tables. Can you blame us? But something we haven’t spent much time discussing lately is shuffleboard pucks. When you think about it, it’s kind of shocking that we overlooked this topic. Without pucks, a shuffleboard table is just a fancy piece of furniture, like a basketball without a hoop is just a 10-foot coatrack. Well, it’s time to give pucks their day in the sun.

There are 3 general shapes to a puck: flat, pointed, or cupped. Generally speaking, flatter pucks slide faster on the table. The more pointed your puck is, the slower it will slide. Cupped pucks are sort of a middle ground between flat and pointed; they're still a fast-sliding puck, but not as fast as a flat puck. A professional player may have 3 to 4 different sets of pucks with them for different playing scenarios. For the casual player, we recommend using a slightly pointed puck. A .05 would be a solid choice.

The puck's weight can affect how quickly it moves down the ice and what happens when it hits other pucks. Think about what would happen if you rolled a bowling ball into a billiards ball. What would happen to the billiard ball? The tournament regulation weight for a shuffleboard puck is 342-346 grams. That weight includes the puck's cap.  In a tournament setting, shuffleboard puck weights are controlled and very important. In a casual setting, your pucks don’t have to be regulation weight, but it is probably a good idea to make sure they are all the same weight. Then again, it might be fun to have a few different weights lying around to experiment with different shots. 

The puck size is most often determined by the size of the shuffleboard table being used. There are two specific puck sizes generally accepted for recreational and tournament use. Two and five-sixteenth inches and two and one-eighth inches. Smaller pucks are best suited for shorter tables, typically nine to fourteen feet in length, and are usually around eighteen inches wide, as measured on the playing surface. Conversely, the larger pucks, with diameters of 2 and 5/16 inches, are best suited for the longer, wider tables. Tournament-approved tables have playing surfaces that are 20 feet 8 inches long and 20 inches wide. Larger pucks allow for more competitive strategic play on the wider surface. Playing on tables with correctly sized pucks and proper table sizes will go a long way toward developing your skill and consistent play. This is primarily because the level of play is not determined by physical strength but rather by the player’s ability to direct the puck with the greatest control and accuracy.