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Author Topic: Opposition watching a team prebowl  (Read 7473 times)

don coyote

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Opposition watching a team prebowl
« on: November 07, 2021, 10:59:02 AM »
Opposition watching a team prebowl.

Is there any rule against a opposing team watching the other team prebowl?

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SVstar34

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Re: Opposition watching a team prebowl
« Reply #1 on: November 07, 2021, 12:07:43 PM »
Uh no... Why would there be?
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MJS73

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Re: Opposition watching a team prebowl
« Reply #2 on: November 07, 2021, 12:17:46 PM »
Was the other team called the Astros?
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Bowler19525

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Re: Opposition watching a team prebowl
« Reply #3 on: November 07, 2021, 01:09:26 PM »
No rule against it. Not sure what difference it makes.  The opposing team probably just wants to make sure the pre-bowling is on the up and up.  Nothing wrong with that.
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milorafferty

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Re: Opposition watching a team prebowl
« Reply #4 on: November 07, 2021, 09:09:16 PM »
If the opposing team is available to "watch" the other team bowl ,why not just bowl the match then?
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Bowler19525

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Re: Opposition watching a team prebowl
« Reply #5 on: November 07, 2021, 11:04:45 PM »
Quote from: milorafferty on November 07, 2021, 09:09:16 PM
If the opposing team is available to "watch" the other team bowl ,why not just bowl the match then?

There have been times our team pre-bowled simply because we had "issues" with the other team and didn't want to bowl with them.  We wouldn't have cared if they sat and watched us, but if they offered to pre-bowl with us that would have defeated the whole purpose and we would have refused.
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JessN16

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Re: Opposition watching a team prebowl
« Reply #6 on: November 08, 2021, 12:29:58 PM »
I can remember that being fairly common about 30 years ago. I was on a league once where no prebowling was allowed unless a league officer was present along with a center representative.

With the scoring systems we have now that can track when someone edits a score, it's much less of an issue than it was in the days of telescores or untraceable changes in the computer.

But no, there's nothing wrong with it. As to the question of "if the other team is available to bowl, why not just prebowl too," they might prefer the league environment and seeing their other friends. It's not the regularly-appearing team's job to bend to the requests of the team that can't make it on time. And, on the flip side, scores that are pre-bowled aren't some kind of secret that the other team can't be privy to.
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txbowler

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Re: Opposition watching a team prebowl
« Reply #7 on: November 11, 2021, 12:15:38 PM »
We actually have a league rule where if the opponent watches the pre-bowl their team is fined $40.  Why?  Because we have teams and bowlers who play "the game" as I call it.  They would watch to record the scores so they knew what they had to shoot each game in advance.  And if they had the game won by the 7th or 8th frame, the bowlers would seemingly make bad shots and open the rest of the game for average maintenance.

When you have a 56 team league bowling for an almost $80,000 prize fund, yes some bowlers will take every advantage they can.
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Bowler19525

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Re: Opposition watching a team prebowl
« Reply #8 on: November 11, 2021, 03:25:34 PM »
Quote from: txbowler on November 11, 2021, 12:15:38 PM
We actually have a league rule where if the opponent watches the pre-bowl their team is fined $40.  Why?  Because we have teams and bowlers who play "the game" as I call it.  They would watch to record the scores so they knew what they had to shoot each game in advance.  And if they had the game won by the 7th or 8th frame, the bowlers would seemingly make bad shots and open the rest of the game for average maintenance.

When you have a 56 team league bowling for an almost $80,000 prize fund, yes some bowlers will take every advantage they can.

Is your center Lanetalk enabled, and if so does the fine apply if the scores are recorded from the app remotely while the team pre-bowls?  What if the opposition has "informants" that report the scores back to the opposition?

Depending on what scoring system the center has, the opposing team can just call up the recap sheet on the screen during game 1 and see all of the scores the other team had for all the games.

It is surprising that a league with $80K in the prize fund allows pre-bowling at all.
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JessN16

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Re: Opposition watching a team prebowl
« Reply #9 on: November 11, 2021, 04:17:21 PM »
Quote from: txbowler on November 11, 2021, 12:15:38 PM
We actually have a league rule where if the opponent watches the pre-bowl their team is fined $40.  Why?  Because we have teams and bowlers who play "the game" as I call it.  They would watch to record the scores so they knew what they had to shoot each game in advance.  And if they had the game won by the 7th or 8th frame, the bowlers would seemingly make bad shots and open the rest of the game for average maintenance.

When you have a 56 team league bowling for an almost $80,000 prize fund, yes some bowlers will take every advantage they can.

That's just strange.

Every league, and I mean every single one but one, that I've ever bowled in either delivered the prebowled scores to the table either one game at a time, or all three games, before the present team rolls the first ball.

The one league that did it differently was in a house that had some kind of functionality to reveal frame-by-frame scores in real time.

The concept of "knowing what you have to shoot" and then sandbagging down to that number just so you can manage your average for future weeks is pretty chancy. I've seen teams foul up a game against a prebowled opponent because the scores for a game were low and they weren't pressing like they normally would.
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avabob

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Re: Opposition watching a team prebowl
« Reply #10 on: November 11, 2021, 09:02:31 PM »
Its not about sandbagging.  To me there is an advantage to knowing what you have to beat.  Pre bowling team gets no such advantage.
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LiverDance

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Re: Opposition watching a team prebowl
« Reply #11 on: November 13, 2021, 03:15:45 PM »
Having your scores revealed early might provide slight motivation to avoid pre-bowling.  Unless sandbagging is involved, it's a slight advantage at best.

Years ago we had this rule that pre-bowled scores were kept secret but no one could agree on a feasible penalty if violated. 
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JessN16

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Re: Opposition watching a team prebowl
« Reply #12 on: November 13, 2021, 06:37:02 PM »
Quote from: avabob on November 11, 2021, 09:02:31 PM
Its not about sandbagging.  To me there is an advantage to knowing what you have to beat.  Pre bowling team gets no such advantage.

There should always be motivation to bowl your best. The other team's scores don't really make a difference in that equation.

However, if a team goes in saying "our opponents only shot 900, we can stop at 901," that implies they have the ability to shoot 902, or 950, or more, and choose not to -- which is cheating/sandbagging.

Quite frankly I've run into very few people skilled enough to both (a) shoot up/down to an opponent's score without running the risk of losing to it, who also (b) wasn't a sandbagger anyway. The best bowlers on the league are going to go for the big numbers every time out because that's what they're there to do. The ones that sandbag need to be dealt with in other ways.

p.s.: It's also not like the center is going to evict from the building someone who was in there to watch bowling, and a league rule that sought to limit where a bowler can be and when, and what he can be watching while he's there, is so borderline immature that it should never be followed.
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svengali

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Re: Opposition watching a team prebowl
« Reply #13 on: November 14, 2021, 01:37:38 AM »
Quote from: Bowler19525 on November 11, 2021, 03:25:34 PM
Quote from: txbowler on November 11, 2021, 12:15:38 PM
We actually have a league rule where if the opponent watches the pre-bowl their team is fined $40.  Why?  Because we have teams and bowlers who play "the game" as I call it.  They would watch to record the scores so they knew what they had to shoot each game in advance.  And if they had the game won by the 7th or 8th frame, the bowlers would seemingly make bad shots and open the rest of the game for average maintenance.

When you have a 56 team league bowling for an almost $80,000 prize fund, yes some bowlers will take every advantage they can.

Is your center Lanetalk enabled, and if so does the fine apply if the scores are recorded from the app remotely while the team pre-bowls?  What if the opposition has "informants" that report the scores back to the opposition?

Depending on what scoring system the center has, the opposing team can just call up the recap sheet on the screen during game 1 and see all of the scores the other team had for all the games.

It is surprising that a league with $80K in the prize fund allows pre-bowling at all.

I'm in a league with a similar prize fund and they don't allow unopposed prebowling. If the other team can show up and watch their opponent prebowl then they can get on the lanes as well and have the match right then and there.
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Strider

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Re: Opposition watching a team prebowl
« Reply #14 on: November 14, 2021, 07:31:55 AM »
Many years ago, a league officer had to watch the pre bowl.  The other team was offered the choice to bowl with that team so both would be bowling on the same conditions. If they chose not to, they had the option to watch. Like someone else mentioned, with modern scoring systems, it's much harder to pull off any monkey business.

Every time I've dealt with pre bowling, the scores were always provided in advance.  Unless the score was pretty bad, very few people have the ability to get up on a score, then throw off as JessN16 said.  If you're bowling live and you opponent is struggling, how many people go, man I've got this game wrapped up early, let me bag off the rest of the game? It might come to bite you in totals later.  I guess there's a slight advantage of bowling a known bad pre bowl score from the beginning, but even so, over the course of 100 of so games during a league, how much could you even bag off of bowling against 1 or 2 bad pre bowl scores?  I bet it wouldn't even add up to a pin.  True baggers usually bowl 1 complete league averaging well below their ability and maybe sub in several leagues averaging "normal", but staying below the 21 games it takes to establish an average. Averaging 30 or so pins below your average to clean up in handicap tournaments can help a bagger, 1 does not.  I'm not sure what real advantage they would gain in txbowler's situation for the current year.  Maybe an extra stick (if it's a handicap league) if everything went perfectly, maybe still fit under a cap next year?
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