| English/Anglais | French/Francais |
There are two major problems with the FIPJP rules of pétanque. One: they are very badly written. Two: they are written by and for umpires, not players. For both of these reasons, the FIPJP rules are not fit for use by ordinary players in games played without umpires. Such players need a set of rules that they can use, understand, and apply without an umpire. The goal of the Petanque Libre Project is to develop such a set of rules.
The French word libre means “free”, “open”, and “independent”. The name of the project— Petanque Libre— was chosen to indicate the fact that the project is independent of the FIPJP. Currently the project is the work of Stephen Ferg, an American player. Ideally, it would be run as an open international standard and routinely issue a Request for Comments (RFC) when contemplating revisions to the standard.
To download a copy of the rules
In the menu bar at the top of this page, click on The rules/Les règles.
Comments and feedback
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Translations
The base version of the rules is written in English. We welcome translations into other languages and will be happy to work with you if you decide to prepare a translation.
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Petanque Libre 
4 boules per player on a singles team? Four? I don’t think a lot of people are going to go for that one.
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Hi Blarty,
In 2016 BOULISTENAUTE.COM conducted an informal survey of world-class players. (The Youtube video “Pétanque le TaT à 3 ou 4 boules? Interwiews” is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYTgJVBooKo ) By a ratio of 2 or 3 to 1, those players said that they would prefer to play singles with 4 boules. That’s why (as the section on differences between FIPJP and PL says) “PL rules contain a deliberately provocative specification (4 boules) because PL wants players to make an active decision about this matter— something that the Consensus Rule allows them to do.” The Consensus Rule allows players to play singles with whatever number of boules they prefer– 3, 4, 5, 6.
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the advantage of 4 boules is that the game is less interrupted.
but there is sometimes a smell of lobbying – those who will really benefit from 4 boules are the manufacturers.
a note on the side: a player can use four /different/ boules, there is no rule stating that all boules must be identical. so it is very likely that almost all Petanque players have enough boules.
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