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Author Topic: Interesting article about why leagues allow and promote dumping and sandbagging  (Read 10078 times)

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Found an interesting bowling topic that we all deal with and know is going on all the time. Its so sad to admit it. - Why Do Bowling Leagues Promote SandBagging and Dumping ?
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blesseddad

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One way to elimate sandbagging in handicap leagues is to make the team payout distribution more even where the 1st place team doesn't make much more than the 5th place team.  You can eliminate the individual payouts or make them small....I was the high average bowler in my winter league and received $12 :)

If the sandbaggers want to make money they can bowl in the scratch sidepots.

Why don't we just hand out participation trophies for everybody and eliminate the money all together, since you want no reward for those who bowled good enough to win?  I bowl in a league like this now, and can not wait for the old guard to die off and the prize fund might actually be increased to the point where someone might want to try. Right now, everybody gets about the same, and therefore, no one really puts that much effort into their games...might as well put the black lights on, crank up the music and bring out the birthday cake...sheesh

MI 2 AZ

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The money for sandbaggers is not usually in leagues, it is in tournaments, whether the local weekend tournament or the online virtual ones.  I used to participate in one of the virtual tournaments but I was steadily losing money so I decided to study one of the top money winners.  What I noticed was this bowler had a unique skill that I did not possess.  He could predict when he would bowl good or bad.

I monitored how many brackets this bowler would enter each week.  On weeks he only entered a few (1-3) he would bowl sub-500.  On weeks when he loaded up to the maximum allowed brackets, he would bowl 650+.  He would have just as many bad weeks or more, than good weeks so the average would remain low enough to get some decent handicap.  Since I am not able to duplicate that particular skill of knowing when I will bowl good or bad, I decided that I would be donating too much of my money to him so I quit bowling virtual tournaments.

 PS - I think that the 1-3 brackets was 'insurance' in case he started off a game with a string of strikes and had a chance at a 300 game.

And for those who do not know what a virtual tournament is, it is a tournament where you are allowed to use your league scores to compete against other bowlers across the country (or world) for weekly position and bracket money.  If you bowl in more than one league, you can use each league's scores as a seperate weekly entry.

« Last Edit: July 20, 2013, 10:57:05 AM by MI 2 AZ »
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Well you cant make this stuff up, a guy came in to the bowling alley today and asked if he bowls in a pba sports league and gets a very low average can he use it for tournaments lol. I asked him wouldn't you rather bowl good and win , he goes "No i need a low average to get a lot of handicap to win this tournament" i guess at least he was honest lol.
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