Understanding Scoring Rules in Bowling

Posted by Nick Niesen on October 29th, 2010

Score rules are the basic rules in bowling. They determine who won the game or how they got their scores. There are guidelines that need to be followed in scoring a bowling game.

There are frames that are used in scoring the number of pins that were knocked down during the delivery. The frame is shaped in a square with a little square box in the upper right corner of the square. When a strike is scored, no marking or counts are made in the boxes. However, the pins that were knocked down on the first delivery are scored in the box next to the small square. The pins knocked down on the second delivery are listed on the smaller box inside the square.

A strike occurs when all 10 pins are knocked down on the first delivery. The square is then marked with the letter ?x? on the upper right corner of the box. The score is then made by counting 10 for the strike and adding it to the number of pins knocked down on the next two deliveries.

Two strikes made consecutively are scored as a ?double?. The score for the first strike is then 20 and the number of pins knocked down on the first delivery before the second strike. Strikes that are made on three successive attempts are called a ?turkey? and they are scored as triple. The score of the initial strike is 30. The maximum score that a player can get is 300. To do this, he needs to make 12 strikes consecutively.

There is also a spare, which is scored when the pins that were left standing after the first delivery were knocked down on the second delivery. Both deliveries should fall in the same frame. A spare is then marked with a ?/? in the smaller square on the upper right corner of the frame. The count for every spare is scored 10 added to the number of pins knocked down after the next delivery.

An open frame occurs when a player was unable to knock down all of the 10 pins after the two deliveries. A split may happen when the head pin was knocked down but there were lower pins that remained standing creating two separate set of pins.

Scoring may be hard to understand especially if the player is a beginner. It would be easier for him to enjoy the game first before understanding the scoring guidelines. After frequent visits to the bowling lanes, he will eventually learn to understand the scoring rules of bowling.