Battle Bowling

I have always thought that bowling is like basketball, except instead of constant action, they just shoot free throws. It seems strange to me that a sport can be just that. Many people who have gone bowling have hit a strike or two, similar to hitting a free throw. If a regular person can achieve it and the opponent isn't there to stop you, what is so special about the sport?

I'm sure professional bowlers spend years honing their craft, building consistency, and having laser focus with a ton of emotional control. But, as an outsider, it just does not look impressive at all. I remember going through a phase where I would randomly watch top highlights of random sports that aren't very familiar to me. The best hockey goal, the best slides in curling, the best plays in volleyball, then I saw the best bowls in bowling. Among those highlights, a lot of them had to hit a split. Which is when the pins are all knocked down other than the 2 that are on the opposite ends. Hitting splits is extremely difficult as it isn't possible for the ball to hit both. So, these pros would put a spin and apply a bit more strength to hit one pin so that it bounces to the other side of the lane to hit the other pin. Then, it hit me (no puns intended).

What if we make these trick shots more often?

Splits are created when the bowler made a mistake, it wasn't intentional to leave a highly difficult shot for themselves to hit. So, what if you have to hit what your opponent leaves for you, and your opponent purposely gives you difficult shots? Now, we have defence and offence. Now, it's a proper sport. Here's Battle Bowl.

Here's how it works:

The first one to go is on defence, in this case, we'll name him/her Bowler A. Bowler A must strategically knock down pins, but must leave at least one for the opponent to hit. If Bowler A gets a strike, the opponent will get +2 points. For this example, Bowler A decides to leave 2 pins on the opposite end.

Now, Bowler B is on offence. Bowler B's intention is to hit all of the pins left by Bowler A. Bowler B gets a point for every pin hits. However, Bowler B will also lose a point for pins that are not hit.

This creates strategic play to how many pins you would want to leave your opponent as the defender. If you only leave one pin, it is a lot easier to aim for that one pin, and you essentially just give away one point. While leaving 2 pins, you set your opponent to get 0 points, if they only hit 1 out of 2. Also, how difficult is it to leave 2 pins as the defender? I'm no skilled bowler, but I'd imagine it is also skill-demanding and risky for the defender to create effective setups.

Yes, I just made bowling a lot more exciting, theoretically.

EGON