by Stephen H

Created on: August 23, 2009   Last Updated: August 24, 2009

If you are looking for a fun indoor sport to play with your friends and family, you could do a lot worse than try ten pin bowling. Americans usually refer to the game simply as bowling but the Europeans like to add ten pin to distinguish it from crown green bowling, a very different sport. Ten pin bowling is a great way to spend a couple of hours in an addictive competition which most people can play without needing to understand a complex set of rules. It is one of those infuriating games where you learn the rules really quickly, but becoming a good player takes some practice.

Playing Arena

The game is played on a bowling alley. This is a long thin lane, a little over a metre wide, which has ten pins, or as the British like to call them skittles, at the end of the lane set up in a triangle, with one pin in the centre on the front row, followed by two either side of the central pin in the second row, three evenly spaced in the third row and ending with a row of four. At the other end of the lane are the approach lines. The nearest to the pins, at sixty feet away, is the foul line. When playing, the player bowling must not allow their foot to cross this line, otherwise a foul is called and the player loses their score for that bowl. The other approach line is about 15 feet further from the pins, and denotes the starting point for a player to begin their run up to their bowl. The person bowling must stay within these two lines when they play.

Either side of the lane are gutters. These look just like housing gutters, as if a tube had been cut in half and laid next to the lane. These are there to catch poorly bowled balls and safely carry the balls away. It avoids people having to run over other lanes to retrieve errant balls. It is a lot easier to bowl badly than you might think, since the lanes are shaped to make it difficult to bowl a straight ball. If you aim for the centre pin and bowl a straight ball, you will find that the ball curves to one side and too far to one side will take it into one of the gutters.

Bowling balls come in different weights, the heaviest being 16lbs. Players should choose a weight that is comfortable for them, but remember, the lighter the ball the more effort that is required to bowl at speed. Each ball is smooth save for three holes, one for the thumb and two for fingers. It is using these three holes that the player picks up the ball and maintains their grip. As you bowl the ball, you allow your fingers to

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