How many pins per game should women receive to compete with the men?

By John Forst

An interesting conversation came up once again during the Brunswick Aalborg International 2005 Tournament (BAI 05) at the Lovvang Bowling Center. The conversations usually centers on the question: "Why do women need to get so many pins during the open tournaments?"

This question always seems to come up (obviously by the male bowlers) when there seems to be the appearance that the women had an advantage based on the handicap, or there seems to be too many women in the finals.

Tournament officials make one of two decisions when running a tournament; they either offer a side prize fund for all women playing and they make them bowl scratch for the main prize fund, or they give women a certain number of pins-per-game as an equalizer to the men. Most tournaments have chosen to go the route of giving pins-per-game to the ladies. The current spread for pins is between five to ten pins per game, with the current average being about eight pins.

During the BAI 05, there was a larger amount of women participating than normal. In fact, out of the 200 individual entries, 70 of them (or 35% of the field) were women. Normally, that would be lower at 20% to 22 %. If you include all 556 entries in the tournament, which includes all of the re-entries that participated, 177 entries or 31.83% of the tournament entrants were female.

One reason for the high percentage of ladies participating was due to the center hosting the WTBA Women's World Championships in August. Several countries sent their females to the tournament for a couple of reasons. Some came to compete because their country was making decisions on who was making their team; some bowlers came to get acquainted with the center; but most bowlers came to the tournament to go for the money. The BAI 05 paid 11,000 euros (about $13,500 US) for first place and 7,000 euros ($8,500 US) for second place.

Aalborg Facts:
Bowling Center: Lovvang Bowling Center
Location: Aalborg, Denmark
Lane Machine: Kustodian Plus (2)
Lane Conditioner: KBT Offense-HV
Lane Cleaner: KBT Defense-C (5:1 dilution)
Pinsetters: Brunswick GSX
Pins: Brunswick Max
Pattern: 38 feet; 22.90 mL
Lane Surface: Brunswick Pro Anvilane

If we look at the statistics from the tournament after qualifying, of the top 42 bowlers, ten of them were women, which is 23.8% of the finalist. There were also six players from the "Desperado Squad" to make the final. Only one desperado finalist was a female. That brings the total finalist count to 48. Of those 48 bowlers, 11 were females. That is 22.9% of the finalist field.

Are 22.9 % of the women in the finals equal to the 31.83% of the women that bowled the tournament? Obviously not. This number suggests that the finals were short one female bowler. If I use the averages between the men and the women for all qualifying squads, the men averaged 194.6523 and the women averaged 187.5896; a difference of 7.0627 pins-per-game.

Knowing that the women are given, on average, eight pins-per-game, these numbers suggest that the women were given one extra pin than they actually needed to compete. Which is the correct answer? I, personally, say leave it at eight pins. After watching several tournaments and putting out various conditions, eight pins just seems to be the right number.

The final result was moot as the highest finishing lady was Helen Johnsson of Sweden. She finished in fifth place. The tournament was won by arguably the best bowler in the world today, Mika Koivuniemi of Finland. He defeated the English left-hander Paul Moor in a 2-game total pin match: 438 to 410.

The Lovvang Bowling Center is 30 lanes of Brunswick Pro Anvilane approaches and lanes which were installed four years ago. The conditioning machines used were two brand new Kustodian Plus Elites that matched the machines that the center had previously, except for the newer upgrades on the cleaning system and the transfer brush. The conditioner used was KBT Offense HV and the cleaner used was KBT Defense C mixed at 5 to 1.

The pattern was 38 feet with a volume of 22.90 mls. The pump was set at 50 micro liters. The forward run of the pattern had 9.60 mls and the reverse run, which started at 29 feet, had 13.30 mls. The tape data for the pattern indicated the pattern to be Sport Bowling compliant as the tapes at 15 feet averaged 2.05 to 1. The tape at 30 feet averaged 1.55 to 1. The tape at 36 feet averaged 1.60 to 1. All tape ratios were measured from the center of the lane to the outside board on the lane.

The discussion before the tournament was to bring scores down a bit as Europe has had several tournaments with very high scores lately. The decision was to shoot for the 42nd spot in the tournament to be around 1300 for the six games (By the way it took a score of 1299 to make the 42nd spot). With the unlimited amount of reentries in the tournament, bowlers would have several chances to give it a shot to make the cut.