You know you're from Ohio when you hear the word 'cornhole' and don't chuckle to yourself. Drive anywhere around the midwest in the summer, and you can see the game being played at parties, BBQ's, and charity events. The game goes by many names depending on what area of the country you are in, but its most commonly referred to as cornhole. It also goes by regional names such as bags, baggo, or bean bag toss. Whatever you call the cornhole game, most people find themselves addicted to the game from the moment you pick up the bags. Its a game that young and old can play, any shape or size, and something that's easy to do while you continue socializing with others at the party.

Where the game was started is somewhat unknown, most people assume it was started by a group of farmers with some spare corn and some spare time. Most people vaguely remember playing the game when there were kids, but it wasn't until recent years that the 'sport' took off and started spreading like wildfire. The game is pretty simple to understand and play. Setup two cornhole boards 27 feet away from one another, and have two opponents alternate throwing cornhole bags at the board opposite of them. Each player tosses their four colored bags until they are done. The scoring is pretty simple, a bag that's thrown in the hole is worth 3 points and the ones lying on the board are worth 1. You tally all the points on the board and the team with the most points gets to add the difference to their score.

You can choose to attempt to build the platforms themselves or you can go the easy route and purchase them at an ecommerce shop. Regulation boards are 4 feet x 2 feet and are made with 1/2"-3/4" plywood. The hole is a 6" circle cut at the top of the board. A popular alternative to the regulation board is the cornhole boards that collapse for simple traveling. In areas such as Illinois, the smaller platforms are much more common for everyday play. As you probably guessed, a smaller target makes for harder game play. But, you do gain something with the more difficult playing conditions, these boards are much easier to put away in the back of your car for easy travel from tournament to tournament. The bags measure 6"x6" and are made with duck cloth and filled with 1 pound of feed corn.

Since the sport has really started to take off, large tournaments are being hosted every year with more and more being added season after season. In Ohio, the largest cornhole tournament was even televised and had thousands of entries from people wanting to showcase their dominance. The tourneys were really the best way for these players to see how they matched up. It has always been hard to see how good you really were when you're only playing with your neighbors on your homemade cornhole sets. The tourneys are the perfect way to assess your skill level against other area players to see how you stack up.

Not surprisingly, companies have developed products to meet the needs of the growing sport. Most cornhole players have either left the bags in the rain or had an animal get inside their bags, well a new company has solved that problem by developing weather resistant cornhole bags which contain plastic as opposed to corn filing. To make things easy on yourself and to save you from getting into unnecessary fights, some companies are developing some scoring systems that will help keep score for you. Even though you see more and more people playing the game, the main draw seems to be the easy going nature and relaxing pace of the game. In a high tech world, the game of cornhole is very low tech. Tossing bean bags on a summer evening is about as relaxing as it gets, maybe that's why it's growing so fast.

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