What are Side Pots

A common thing in bowling are side pots, but what are they? Well the short answer is that they are mini-games that use your bowling score to complete for cash and/or prizes. I’m just going to talk about the more common ones you may see/hear about. Side pots typically run between 1 and 5 dollars. Some like 50/50 allow you more than one buy in so they can cost more. Side pots should be settled by the end of the night and in the case of our league don’t have a “fee” for running the pot (meaning 100% of the proceeds are paid out)

50/50 Raffle (or just 50/50)

The 50/50 game is a common game where you buy a ticket (or multiple tickets). Then at a certain point in the night the tickets are all collected and a winner is drawn. The owner of the ticket then has 1 chance to bowl a strike (usually on a different lane than they were using). If they win they get the full pot, if not, they get half. The remaining pot either goes into the prize fund or in the case of our league goes into the charity fund. Donations for the past 2 years have exceeded $3000 (yea to us for doing good) but that also means we have paid back at least that much to participants.

Mystery

Draw a number out of a bag, if it matches your score, you win! If nobody wins, it rolls over to the next week. This is an easy one because everyone has chance to win.

Handicap

Highest score with handicap for each game wins. There is also a winner for handicap series.

Brackets

A bracket game is similar to other bracket type setups you’ve see (march madness, best Sean Bean death, best pizza style, etc). Basically you purchase one to many slots on the bracket (a bowling bracket is typically 8 per bracket) and are randomly placed. If you win your bracket (based on score of first game) you advance to the next round and compete again, winners advance to the final round with the winner taking home the pot. Brackets are always in sets of 8 since there are only 3 rounds of bowling.

King of the Hill

King of the hill is similar to brackets, except instead of competing head to head with 1 bowler, the object is to be in the top half of everyone who is in the pot. Say 20 bowlers start, in the first round, only the top 10 scorers advance, in the second round only the top 5 advance, in the last round, the top scorer wins.

Poker Hands

This is a game that is usually played by a single team (though multiple teams may play) and not administered by the league. Usually you get to draw one card for a spare and two for a strike then form the best poker hand you can with the cards you have. Usually there is a limit to the number of cards you can have at any one time (5 - 7 cards). Best hand wins.