Is your handicap league fair?

[fortheloveofbowling]

Handicap leagues should always use the previous years averages for the first 4-6 weeks. Depending on the house and the scoring pace base the handicap at 90% of 220-230 and base it by the team average. If you have 2 teams one averaging 850 and the other at 1050 you would have scores of 1075 and 1095 based on a 1100 average if the teams bowled exactly average. That is not even 2 marks mark over the course of an entire game for 10 bowlers. The key for handicap leagues and any leagues for that matter is consistency. I think you will find if you look at the history of your league it is the teams that are consistently around their averages more often that win. Go back and do a study of the least amount of variance per team in relation to their averages and i will bet the top teams have the lower percentages. For instance a 180 bowler who shoots a 198 or 162 would be off by 10%. The thing about fair is it goes both ways and it is also not fair to penalize bowlers who have worked to achieve a certain level of both performance and consistency.

[J Anderson]

For my answer I quote the late Lou Reed;"Life's good, but not fair at all." Should bowling be any different?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeIBfWQYbuI

[Mike White]

I think you will find if you look at the history of your league it is the teams that are consistently around their averages more often that win.

Consistency alone isn't the answer

Take a hypothetical league with two bowlers that is 54 games long.

Bowler one shoots a score of 181 every game except one where he shoots 127.
Bowler two shoots a score of 179 every game except one where he shoots 233.

Both bowlers end the season with exactly the same average, but Bowler one will have a lot more wins.

The idea that to be competitive in a handicap league you either have to improve significantly as the season transpires, is in direct conflict with detecting "sandbaggers".

My most recent team was just 4 people who joined as individuals and were put together as a team.

None of the 4 people knew each other before the league started.

One had no book average yet, and another only had 1 previous season of bowling.

Overall we had a middle of the pack average.

During the first half of the season we caught a lot of gifted wins where our opponents just bowled bad.

The last half of the season we had to fight to stay near the top.

We had a number of practice sessions trying to teach the lower average team members on the basics of spare shooting.

During the last couple of weeks the pressure was so intense I resorted to telling my teammates to stand on a specific board, and try to hit a specific target, no more explaining why. If they hit the target, good things happens, if not, oh well.

The idea was they weren't making mistakes in the decision making process, just occasionally in the execution.

We ended up winning the league on the 2nd to last game of the season.

One of our bowlers was awarded most improved. His average went from 140 Book to about 165 at the end of the season.

I was accused of "sandbagging" a few times, since I had started the season with a bad elbow so I couldn't carry well, and with about 2 months to go I felt healthy enough to throw the ball like I used to, and my average raised about 8 pins during that time.

[Josch]

Handicap in my league greatly benefits the worst bowlers. It's a youth league, which means that it's often the first league people join, and the new bowlers, and those who've only been bowling for a few years, get significantly better as the year goes on. They establish a very low average, and they bowl above average just by making a few spares or getting a few strikes. The handicap is based on 90% of 200. Prior to this year, the best team always won, but that team was broken up a few weeks into the season as they were all averaging above 200, giving them an even larger advantage.

Here is a current league standing sheet, with 5 weeks left in the season.



The teams with lower averages are higher on the standings, excluding the very bottom team.

i'm on team 4. We're second to last, despite holding all of the season high team scores. I have second or first for all of the personal season high scores. I know our pin count appears low, but that is due to one of my teammates showing up less than half the time. When he does show up he's out of practice, and his average drops most weeks. Our first year on the league we got second, because our starting averages were so low and improvement was easy. This is our 4th and last year as a team.

[J Anderson]

Handicap in my league greatly benefits the worst bowlers. It's a youth league, which means that it's often the first league people join, and the new bowlers, and those who've only been bowling for a few years, get significantly better as the year goes on. They establish a very low average, and they bowl above average just by making a few spares or getting a few strikes. The handicap is based on 90% of 200. Prior to this year, the best team always won, but that team was broken up a few weeks into the season as they were all averaging above 200, giving them an even larger advantage.

Here is a current league standing sheet, with 5 weeks left in the season.



The teams with lower averages are higher on the standings, excluding the very bottom team.

i'm on team 4. We're second to last, despite holding all of the season high team scores. I have second or first for all of the personal season high scores. I know our pin count appears low, but that is due to one of my teammates showing up less than half the time. When he does show up he's out of practice, and his average drops most weeks. Our first year on the league we got second, because our starting averages were so low and improvement was easy. This is our 4th and last year as a team.

Having a teammate who shows up less than half the time is probably costing your team at least 1 or 2 places in the standings. If your league uses the typical rule for blind scores, he's costing you ten pins every game. If you're already spotting most of the other teams pins, the last thing you want is to spot them an additional ten.

[larry mc]

handicap is fair unless u play with sandbaggers , if u dont like it go scratch

[Josch]

Having a teammate who shows up less than half the time is probably costing your team at least 1 or 2 places in the standings. If your league uses the typical rule for blind scores, he's costing you ten pins every game. If you're already spotting most of the other teams pins, the last thing you want is to spot them an additional ten.

My league gives average with no deduction for absences.

[JJKinGA]

I went back to some league stats I had from 2012. I had recorded team scratch scores for 28 weeks of league play (3 games per week). I made some arbitrary decisions. I consdiered a good score one that was in the top 1/6 of all scores for the team and a poor score in the bottom 1.6 of all scores for the team. This would be outside of one standard deviation in a normal distribution and i feel gives a good feel for the likely range of scoring.

Consider the lowest average team and highest average team:
Team A = {130, 134, 86, 158}
Team B = {192, 171, 203, 208}

Poor Median Good
Team A 396 428 460
Team B 680 728 780

Next I calculated the handicap needed for Team A's good score to equal Team B's poor score (so they woudl win 1/6 of the team), Team a's good score to equal Team b's median score (they would win 28.9% of the time) and Team A's median score woudl equal team B's median score (50% chance of winning). I did this off a few different handicap bases.

Base A Good = B Poor A Good = B Median A Median = B Median
% of 175 117.7% 143.0% 160.0%
% of 200 86.2% 105.4% 118.2%
% of 220 82.7% 101.2% 112.8%
% of 300 82.5% 100.6% 112.7%

What I concluded is that a lower average team shoudl want as high a base as possible and as high a percentage as possible.
However, as long as the base is higher than the highest average it makes very little difference. And if you want every team to have an equal chance of winning, the USBS guidelines is pretty close to that for this one real life example.

But if fair is that on a good night a low average team can beat a high average team on a poor night then almost any accepted handicap system works. This league has used 905 of 200 and 90% of 220. There really is very little difference for this caliber of league. At 90% the lwoer avearge team can bowl well and win only if the higher average team is sub par. The higher avearage team still wins if they bowl a median game. That may be as fair as anyone can ask for in a handicap league.

It also seems that in this league the variation in scoring is large and about the same for all bowlers. Almost all bowlers are +/- 25 pins between good/poor and median scores. the team scores reflect that and are roughly +/-30 from median to good/poor with the gap to poor smaller in all cases. That elvel of variation further emphasizes that on any given night any team can win with any hanicap system.

The results are typical. If the higher average team wins, the low avearge team complains that they don't get enoguh handicap to compete. If a lower average team wins they are either sand bagging or we give too many pins in handicap. No one every looks at the typical results and sees that it is mostly equitable. No one says I won becuae I bowled better or i won becuase I got all this hanidcap. Just whinning about losing. Just liek this case, i spend hours every year lookign for some angle to find a really good ahndicap system. The conclusion is always the same. There is not a gret system. All result in very similar outcomes over the long hual. None ever fix the whining. So I always jsut abstain from the leauge discussion and vote on handicap. I figure it really is a little deal and I just need to enforce the league's decision.