Listen: you are standing in a backyard. The sun is shining, a cold beverage is likely in your hand, and there are two slanted boards separated by twenty-seven feet of grass. You have four bean bags. Your opponent has four bean bags. The goal is simple enough: throw the bags at the board.

But then the bags start flying, points start accumulating, and suddenly, everyone is arguing over who actually won the round. It is a uniquely human struggle to keep a running tally of numbers while simultaneously trying to toss a bag into a six-inch hole.

So it goes.

If you want to avoid backyard disputes and keep the game moving, you need to understand the sacred art of cornhole scoring. Here is exactly how it works.

The Basic Values

Every bag you throw has a destiny, and that destiny is tied to a specific point value.

• The Woody (1 Point): If your bag lands and comes to rest anywhere on the surface of the board, congratulations. You have earned one point. Note: if the bag hits the ground first and bounces onto the board, it is a foul. Remove it in disgrace. It is worth nothing.

• The Cornhole (3 Points): If your bag goes through the hole—whether it slides in perfectly, gets knocked in by another bag, or drops straight through the center—you have achieved the ideal. Three points.

• The Miss (0 Points): If the bag is on the ground, hanging off the board but touching the grass, or in the neighbor's bushes, you get nothing.

The Great Equalizer: Cancellation Scoring

Here is where the game gets its drama. Cornhole uses cancellation scoring. This means that only one team can score points in any given round (or "inning"), and the points cancel each other out.

Imagine it like a seesaw.

Let’s say Team A throws a great round. They get one bag in the hole (3 points) and two on the board (2 points). Their total for the round is 5. Team B responds valiantly. They get one bag in the hole (3 points) and one on the board (1 point). Their total for the round is 4.

You do not simply add these to a running total. You subtract the lower score from the higher score. Team A’s 5 points minus Team B’s 4 points equals 1 point.

Team A is awarded exactly 1 point for that inning, and because they scored, they earn the honor (and the pressure) of throwing first in the next round.

Winning the Game

The game continues, back and forth, until one team reaches exactly 21 points at the end of an inning.

Some purists will tell you that you must win by two, or that if you go over 21, your score drops back down to 15 (or 11, or 13, depending on who is yelling). Traditional rules dictate that a game is simply over when a team reaches or exceeds 21 points at the conclusion of an inning. But backyard rules are backyard rules. Agree on them before the first bag is thrown, lest you ruin a perfectly good afternoon.

A Better Way to Keep Track

As previously mentioned, holding onto a beverage, conversing with friends, executing the perfect toss, and doing mental subtraction is a lot to ask of the human brain on a Saturday.

You could use a wooden pegboard. You could try to remember the score in your head, which will inevitably lead to someone asking, "Wait, is it 12 to 9 or 13 to 9?" every three minutes.

Or, you could let technology do the heavy lifting. We built a free app precisely for this exact scenario. Just pull out your phone, log the bags for each round, and the app handles the cancellation math for you.

You can find it right here: Baggo Scorekeeper.

Throw your bags. Let the app do the math. Enjoy the yard.