Lesson 5: Pointing styles

1. Pointing
• Offensive Pointing
• Defensive Pointing
• Promoting a boule
• Moving the jack
• Spinning around an obstacle


Offensive pointing
When your opponents have pointed a good ball but it’s determined that it is not worth shooting out, ALWAYS point in the direction of the opponents ball with the intention of coming to rest right against their ball. The result is that the opponents will not shoot your ball when their ball behind it will also get shot out. If you did not earn the point out-right, do the same thing again with the intention of gently touching your ball to gently bump their ball away


Defensive Pointing
Defensive pointing means to block the opponents pointing lanes especially late in the hand. Here, you are trying to reduce your opponent’s opportunities to easily point right to the jack. Every defensive point is thrown short to close the middle line and then either/both the right side or the left depending on your opponents throwing styles, i.e. is one of them left handed?


Promoting a boule
Promoting your teams’ ball is a powerful play. Here, you play hard enough in the direction of your teams’ ball in order to push it into owning the point. Play only hard enough to bump your ball into winning the point and soft enough that if you miss the bump, you will still earn the point. It moves it only a short distance, generally taking its place if it is another boule; or, if it is the jack, moving it only a little way.


Moving the jack
This too is a powerful play. It is a low percentage play owing to the small size of the jack. The same principles in promoting your boule apply to moving the jack. Don’t waste your boule by throwing too hard in an all out effort. Play softly enough to drag the jack back to your team’s boules behind the jack but still keeping your ball in the game.



Spinning around an obstacle
It is possible to reach the jack by curling around previously played boules where a bump is determined to be too dangerous or otherwise unavailable.

In order to increase the curl on the boule, spin must be applied to the ball before it reaches the ground. To give the boule this rotating movement as you release the boule keep the fingers slightly flexed as it leaves the hand.

Also the foot corresponding to the throwing arm no longer faces into the game, it is turned very slightly to the left for a left curl and to the right for a right curl.

For a right-handed player:
To 'curl' a boule, the general rule is not to have the palm of the hand facing the ground, but to rotate it slightly to the right - to go to the right – or rotated to the left, to go to the left. At the moment of releasing the boule, the thumb will be facing the ground to curve a boule to the right and the thumb will be pointing to the sky to curve the ball to the left.