How to Calculate a Handicap

Most bowling leagues are “handicap leagues”. Bowling has a unique handicapping system that allows bowlers of all skill levels and average range to compete together on an even playing level.

There are different ways that leagues determine how to calculate the handicap. In all cases,  you will need an average, a base and a percentage. The United States Bowling Congress recommends setting a base at or above the highest average in the league and using 100% for the percentage. For our example we are going to use a base of 200 and 100%. We say “the handicap is 100% of 200”.

Let’s look at two teams on a doubles league (two bowlers per team):

In most cases if these two teams competed without handicap, Team 2 would come out on top because their average score is so much higher than the other team’s average score. Now lets calculate the handicap by using 100% of 200 for each individual bowler:

To get the team handicap, we add the individual handicaps of the bowlers on the team:

Now lets look at a sample game between these two teams:

Since this is a handicap league, Team 1 wins the game because they have the highest total pins with handicap.