Archery Scoring Explained: Ring Values, Faces, and 3D Rules

A bullseye scores 10 points. World Archery target faces count down from there in concentric rings — 9, 8, 7, all the way out to 1 at the white edge — and a clean miss goes on the card as an M, worth zero. Inside the gold sits one more circle: the X-ring. It's still a 10, but X count breaks ties in outdoor rankings, and at indoor compound events that inner ring becomes the only 10 on the face.

That's the core of it. The complications — face sizes, end structure, and why 3D courses use completely different numbers — are where archers actually lose points.

Ring values on the five-color face

Every standard face uses the same ladder, two rings per color:

• Gold (yellow): 10 and 9
• Red: 8 and 7
• Blue: 6 and 5
• Black: 4 and 3
• White: 2 and 1

Touch a line, take the higher value. If your shaft so much as kisses the divider between the 9 and the 10, you score 10. This line-cutter rule causes more range arguments than anything else in target archery, which is why nobody touches an arrow — or the face — until every score is called and written down.

Outdoor faces and distances

Recurve archers shoot 70 meters at a 122-centimeter face whose 10-ring measures 12.2 centimeters. That sounds generous on paper. From 70 meters it isn't.

Compound shooters get a shorter, tighter deal: 50 meters at an 80-centimeter face with an 8-centimeter 10-ring. Barebow also shoots 50 meters, but on the full 122-centimeter face — the closest thing the rules offer to mercy.

Indoor scoring at 18 meters

Indoors everything shrinks. The distance drops to 18 meters and the face to 40 centimeters, with a 4-centimeter 10-ring for recurve. Compound archers score only the halved inner ring — 2 centimeters across — as their 10, which is why a clean 600 indoors with a compound is a genuine feat rather than a formality.

Most indoor archers shoot the triple-spot face: three small targets stacked on one boss, one arrow in each, purely to stop arrows smashing into each other. Robin Hoods look great. They also wreck expensive shafts.

Shaft diameter becomes a legal scoring tool here. Fatter arrows cut more lines at 18 meters, while skinny shafts like the Easton X10 exist for the opposite problem — slipping through wind at 70 meters.

Ends, rounds, and matchplay

Outdoor qualification is the 720 round: 72 arrows shot in 12 ends of six, for a maximum of 720 points. Your total seeds you into head-to-head matchplay. Indoor qualification runs 60 arrows in ends of three, topping out at 600.

Matchplay then splits by bow type. Recurve uses the set system — sets of three arrows, two set points for winning a set, one each for a tie, first to six set points wins. A dead-level match goes to a single-arrow shoot-off, closest to center. Compound matches skip the drama and simply total 15 arrows; highest cumulative score takes it.

3D targets run on different math

Walk a 3D course and the colored rings vanish. You're shooting foam animals with scoring zones molded into the vitals — one arrow per target from the stake, usually across a 30-target course — and the two big sanctioning bodies count them differently.

• ASA: rings worth 14, 12, 10, 8, and 5. Two 12-rings sit inside the 10, one high and one low, and the 14 hides in the upper corner of the 8-ring — you have to call it before shooting to claim the points.
• IBO: rings worth 11, 10, 8, and 5, with a single 11-ring dead center inside the 10.
• Both: miss the animal entirely and you score zero.

The strategy difference is real. Chasing an ASA 12 means aiming away from center, so a small miss turns a 10 into an 8. That gamble — plus the unknown yardage many 3D classes shoot — is why arrow speed matters more here than almost anywhere else. The spread across current flagship compounds, from the Bowtech Alliance 30 to the PSE Sicario Carbon FDS, runs roughly 338 to 357 fps IBO, and every bit of that flattens trajectory when you've misjudged a target by two yards.

Make the scorecard work for you

Score everything, even practice ends. Totals hide problems; X counts and arrow-by-arrow records expose them. And let the format steer your setup — line-cutting diameter indoors, slim shafts for outdoor distance, speed and a forgiving rig for foam. The rules reward archers who pick equipment for the face in front of them, not the one in the catalog photo.