So diku and I are going bowling a lot more often, and now that we are more on an even skill level we were wondering, how can we make this more…interesting? Sure wwe could always bet on the final outcome of the game, winner take all. But does anyone have any other betting methods when it comes to bowling?
I was in a league where they had a gambling element to it, to make it more interesting. It involves quite a bit of skill to make it at all workable, and the more people the better.
People ante up, I believe it was 10 bucks a head. They show you a chart of strikes that you have to match… Like, first game, you have to get a strike in the 1st, 3rd, 7th and 8th frame. Second game, in the the 2nd and 9th frame, and so on. Any frames not mentioned could be strikes or not. Anyone who matched all the strikes listed in all three games won the pot; if not it rolled over until the next week. Pots got quite large sometimes.
The beer frame isn’t cutting it anymore? If you’re pretty evenly matched, try a dollar a point. If you’re really evenly matched, make it ten.
We play poker. We play for fun so we only play a quarter a game, but that’s up to you. Five cards to start, draw one card for each strike. You can only keep five cards in your hand. Strike out in the tenth and you get four cards.
If you don’t get a lot of strikes or the people bowling aren’t evenly matched, you can also draw a card for each spare.
We’ve found that when we’re getting slaughtered by the other team in leagues that trying to get a winning hand helps keep us all into the game.
This is a lot more fun with at least three people.
If you’re playing for money, you might want to play a ‘skins’ game. Every frame is a buck. Winning the game is two bucks.
The advantage to the ‘skins’ format is that a blowout in one frame doesn’t make as much difference. Even if you’re behind by 50 points after five frames, you can still win the next five, and only owe your friend 2 bucks. So you’re always playing for something.
I used to play pool for money on occasion, and invariably we just fixed a price on the match. But once in a while we’d also play a buck for each ball your opponent has left on the table (in 8 ball), so if you ran the table your opponent would owe you $7.
In 9-ball, we’d sometimes play with ‘money’ balls. Sinking the 3 is worth $1, the 6 is worth $2, and the 9 is worth $5. That way, even if you lose, if you sink 2 of the money balls you’d only owe the other player $2.
It just depends on how much ‘granularity’ you want. You can devise a scheme for anything from money on each roll to winner-take-all.