Cancellation Scoring Game:  Curt Day vs. Ted Allen

    On July 20, 1957, Curt Day was about 40 years old and still nine years away from winning his first World Championship in 1966.  But on this day, he pitched against one of the all-time greats of horseshoe pitching when he faced Ted Allen of Boulder, Colorado.  Ted Allen was at that time an eight times World Champion (he went on to win in 1957 and 1959).  In 1955, he set a record that holds to this day; 72 consecutive ringers in a single World Championship Tournament game.  He also had 72 in a row in 1948 at the end of one game and the beginning of another.

    In a cancellation game, ringers cancel each other and it can be seen on the official scorecard to the right of that famous long game that whenever both pitchers had double ringers or “four dead” it was marked as XX on each pitchers column on the particular set of even numbered shoes.  For example, Curt Day pitched two ringers on his first 2 shoes and Allen also hit two ringers.  There was no score recorded after 2 shoes thrown.  The columns read “Ringers”, “Points”, “Score”, “Shoes”, “Ringers”, “Points”, “Score”.  These cards recorded 100 shoes thrown and it took two cards to record this classic game.

    On the 4 Shoes line, an X is placed in Curt’s column meaning he had a ringer, but it didn’t count any points, because Ted Allen had two ringers indicated by an X canceling Curt’s only ringer and a O meaning his other ringer counted for 3 points.  Note the points column on Ted’s side shows the 3 points and the Score column also shows 3 points for his total score at this time.

    Curt Day scored his first 3 points on Allen on Curt’s 19th and 20th shoes by hitting two ringers to Ted’s one ringer.  Up to this point Ted Allen had hit 18 ringers on his first 18 shoes thrown.  Beginning with his 33rd shoe thrown (see line 34 in the “Shoes” column), Curt Day hit 17 consecutive double ringers or 34 ringers in a row.  He only scored 12 points in this stretch, because Allen threw 30 ringers out of his 34 shoes.  The game ended with Ted Allen beating Curt Day by a score of 50 to 49 after both men pitched 174 horseshoes and at that time set a record for the longest game ever pitched in a championship tournament game.  They each had 155 ringers and 69 double ringers (138 of the ringers of each man was a part of a double ringer).  Both men pitched an incredible 89% ringer percentage.  Ted Allen won the game on close shoe points; two close shoes after 102 and 128 to Curt‘s one close shoe after 98 shoes pitched.  Curt scored on 16 ringers that Ted did not cancel (double ringers after 106 when Ted pitched an open set) and Ted scored on  16 ringers that Curt did not cancel (double ringers after 168 shoes pitched when Curt pitched a pair of shoes that failed to score.)  Cancellation scorecards have not changed much over time.