Rules

All historical stats on this site are calculated using our current ruleset. This is a deliberate choice to rely solely on the math and not dig through every email to recreate what was reported at the time. This means everything is measured consistently against the same yardstick and you can compare confidently across eras. The side-effect is some results may look wacky — even a little change can have ripple effects when there are games decided by a pin or two, or playoff races decided by a game or two. This does not mean the original results were a mistake; it’s just a remnant of 19 years of slightly evolving rules.

Here’s what has changed over the years:

• Handicap formula. Our original formula was .95*(200-average), this changed to.95*(225-average) to account for the rare times we have bowlers with over 200 averages. This then changed to floor(.95*(225-floor(average))), which means we drop the remainder on the average first, then calculate handicap and drop the remainder again. This change was made to align with common practice and match the system at Bowlero.
• Penalties and missing bowlers. There were many different ways I handled missing bowlers in our early seasons, including deducting 20 pins from the missing bowler’s average. At some point I landed on the current 199 across the board penalty score - it’s easier to keep track of, and more importantly, if you have a missing bowler, how do you determine which bowler is the one that is missing? Derp.
• Standings. I began by just counting wins and losses, then I changed it to 2 pts per win and 1 pt for the highest team in the match, and then I changed to the system we have now where extra points are determined by how your team did against all the other teams that night. This gives every team a reason to care about their scores all night long, and it eliminates those nights when a team bowls really well and has zero to show for it, because they happen to run up against a team that bowls out of their minds.
• Individual playoffs. For the first 5 seasons, bowlers could qualify for both the Scratch and Handicap playoffs. For the first 7 seasons, the Women’s Scratch playoff was not held. In practice, not everyone who qualified could always make it to playoff night, and alternates would step in — but for record-keeping purposes, the top 8 in each category are recorded as making the playoffs.
• My data management. I started out with an abacus, then moved to a Commodore 64, and I’ve finally got a word processor — getting a little better every day.