Bowling — a game of skittles

Bowl­ing is a great sport, activ­i­ty or just enter­tain­ment. Recent­ly, bowl­ing has tru­ly become a pop­u­lar pas­time and recre­ation all over the world. Every per­son, at least once in his life, should try bowl­ing by “touch”, and hav­ing expe­ri­enced this plea­sure, he will want to enjoy the next game again and again!

His­to­ry of occur­rence

Bowl­ing is an excit­ing and gam­bling game that has been around for more than 5 thou­sand years. The first bowl­ing balls were dis­cov­ered in the tombs of the pharaohs of Egypt. And the tracks intend­ed for this game, found by archae­ol­o­gists in the ter­ri­to­ry of ancient Poly­ne­sia, are con­fir­ma­tion that even in the 6th cen­tu­ry, local res­i­dents active­ly played bowl­ing. By the way, the length of these paths com­plete­ly coin­cid­ed in length with mod­ern ones — 18.228 m.

Bowl­ing has gone through many con­flict­ing stages in its his­to­ry. For exam­ple, for a long peri­od in Ger­many, the game was part of a reli­gious rite, and skit­tles iden­ti­fied pagan gods. It was believed that the more pins a per­son knocked down, the pur­er his soul and motives, the bet­ter his human qual­i­ties.

There were also peri­ods when bowl­ing was con­sid­ered a gam­bling and vicious game. Peo­ple played for mon­ey, made bets. And since the church assured that it was gam­bling that gives rise to ban­dit­ry and fraud, the game was banned.

And only at the end of the 19th cen­tu­ry, bowl­ing became the way peo­ple know this game now. Gen­er­al rules were devel­oped, game stan­dards were estab­lished, and sizes of pins and balls were approved. By the way, it was at this stage that it was decid­ed to use the usu­al ten pins for the game (pre­vi­ous­ly there were only nine).

In 1895, the first Amer­i­can Bowl­ing Asso­ci­a­tion was formed. As a result, the offi­cial rules of the game were estab­lished. From that moment on, every year in Chica­go there were offi­cial bowl­ing tour­na­ments. The first tour­na­ment was held with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of 41 teams.

In 1916, the first con­gress of the Inter­na­tion­al Wom­en’s Bowl­ing was held. And at the end of the 30s of the last cen­tu­ry, spe­cial equip­ment for auto­mat­i­cal­ly rais­ing and set­ting pins and return­ing balls saw the light. Pri­or to this advent of these inven­tions, street urchins often made mon­ey by act­ing as “pin-lifters”.

What is bowl­ing?

Bowl­ing is a game of balls where the main goal is to knock down skit­tles set in a cer­tain order by launch­ing the ball along a bead­less lane. Each bowl­ing game con­sists of 10 stages — frames. Each play­er dur­ing the next frame can throw the ball twice. Depend­ing on the num­ber of pins knocked down, their com­bi­na­tion, the play­er earns points.

The most com­mon com­bi­na­tions of knocked down pins are:

• Strike — 10 pins knocked down by the first throw in a frame
• Spare — 10 pins knocked down in total for both throws in the frame
• Split (split) — after throw­ing the ball in the frame, non-neigh­bor­ing pins remain stand­ing

Kinds

There are many vari­eties of bowl­ing all over the world. The most pop­u­lar types of this game are:

• Bowl­ing with 10 pins (clas­sic bowl­ing)
• 5‑pin bowl­ing (very pop­u­lar in Cana­da)
• Skit­tles with nine pins (pop­u­lar in Europe)
• Can­dlepin bowl­ing (a game with can­dle pins that do not have a pro­nounced base and peak)
• Dakpin bowl­ing (game with duck pins)

Help­ful Tips for Begin­ner Bowlers

Before you start play­ing bowl­ing, you should famil­iar­ize your­self not only with the offi­cial rules, but also with the eti­quette of the game. This will help not only to get full plea­sure from the process, but also to avoid injuries and oth­er mis­un­der­stand­ings.

Coun­cil No. 1

Nev­er throw a ball if there is a per­son on any of the lanes, this is dan­ger­ous, because the ball can recoil and hit a per­son. There are many cas­es in the his­to­ry of bowl­ing where bowl­ing staff have been injured.

Coun­cil num­ber 2

Bowl­ing is posi­tioned as a game that is suit­able for absolute­ly all peo­ple. But this is not entire­ly true, for peo­ple who have prob­lems with their back and low­er back, it is bet­ter to give up this sport, because it is these areas of the mus­cle corset that receive the great­est load in the process.

Coun­cil num­ber 3

Sand is not allowed on the track, it dis­rupts the tra­jec­to­ry of the ball, so peo­ple always wear spe­cial shoes for the game.

Coun­cil No. 4

Do not take bowl­ing balls brought by anoth­er team to play with and, even more so, per­son­al bowl­ing balls that they them­selves buy and fit to their hand.

Coun­cil No. 5

If you are tak­ing chil­dren bowl­ing, choose chil­dren’s balls for them and ask the atten­dants to raise the sides so that chil­dren’s play becomes more coor­di­nat­ed.

Coun­cil No. 6

Choose a ball so that the fin­gers can eas­i­ly enter the holes, and the palm remains straight. But at the same time, the ball should not slip out or be too heavy.

Coun­cil No. 7

For bowl­ing, sports­wear or casu­al style is best — dress­es and suits are out of place.

Coun­cil No. 8

Keep an eye on the machine that sets the skit­tles. You can throw the ball only after the end of its work. Oth­er­wise, you can get into the bar­ri­er, pay a fine and spoil the whole impres­sion of the game.

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