Handicap and percentages

[Martin "BLUFLAME" Seay]

I keep hearing people lament about bowling with low avg bowlers that all they need to do is hit their avg, and they are good. Then I was thinking back to when we had the handicap discussion. If you crunch the numbers when there is a percentage handicap (ex. 90%,80%) the higher the avg is, when hit gives the person with the higher avg the advantage.

(ex. Player A 210 avg vs player B 180 avg. Player A gets 9 pins using 90% of 220 and player B gets 36. If player A hits his avg he gets 219 with cap, player B 216.)

So maybe one could argue that in a perfect world with no sand baggers it would be beneficial to have the higher avg. Remember Average is what you usually score, so more often than not you hit this score.

[Chase]

yep....

[Akil Razzak]

Yeah you're right about what it would be like in a perfect world!!! But we don't live in a perfect world!!!

[Randy Russell]

Yeah I think handicap is crucial to keeping league bowling alive. If enough 205 bowlers realize they have no chance against 230 bowlers at 90% of 210 they will quit and choke the sport out. I tried to explain this two years ago in a league meeting and someone (who averages about 200) told me "but Im not giving you handicap!!!". I couldn't help but laugh because it's just comical that people don't see the simple math.

The Weds league at AFC used to be 80% of 210....every year the scratch teams would run the league over. Two years ago they went to 90% of 220 and this year the 3 highest average teams did not even make the rolloff.

[Martin "BLUFLAME" Seay]

It kills me Randy how people are so short sighted in life period that they don't understand that they get more if they give up a little