We often get questions during the season about how team scores are calculated, so we'd like to take a second to explain how to interpret the standings sheet. This will hopefully make it more clear how team points are determined.
Each player gets a handicap each game, or an additional number of points based on your average. The higher your average, the lower your handicap, and vice versa. This handicap is added to your score in each game when determining the total team score. We use this handicap to "level the playing field" so that any team can compete against any other team regardless of the averages of the teams' players. Your team's total score in any game is just the total of the scores you bowled, plus the total handicaps for all bowlers who played in that game. Whichever team on your pair has the higher total score wins the points for that game.
Calculating an average (and, therefore, a handicap) obviously requires you to have completed some games of bowling. But if you're a new bowler, we don't have any way to assign an average to you until you've completed a representative number of games. Therefore, until you have completed your sixth game of bowling, your team will receive a "vacancy" score of 150 plus the corresponding handicap of 71 per game until you reach that six-game threshold. (For returning bowlers, on the other hand, we use your year-end average from last season until you reach the six-game minimum, at which point you switch over to using the "real" average from this season.)
The standings sheet will display each player's scores from the previous week. In some cases, the score will have a letter in front of it. These letters mean the following:
"a" -- the player was absent for this game, and the team received the standard absentee score of the player's average minus ten pins for that game
"x" -- the player has not yet completed the required six games for his or her actual score to count toward the team total; the score counted toward the player's individual statistics (such as average and handicap), but the score did not count toward the team's score for that game
"v" -- the standard vacancy score of 150, which counts toward the team total for the game in the case where a player has not yet completed their sixth game -- each "x" score will have a corresponding "v" score in the same gameThe team score is therefore the total of all regular scores plus all scores with an "a" or "v" next to them, plus the handicap for those players.
Fortunately, the "x" and "v" scores will mostly go away after the third week or so, since most players will have established their averages by that point.
The "Book Ave" is your average from last year -- new bowlers will always have a "150" in this spot. (This number is just a meaningless placeholder for new players -- our software doesn't give us any other choice.) The "Ave" column, on the other hand, is your actual average from the current season, provided that you have completed at least six games. Your handicap is to the right of your average.
As always, if you have any questions about how this process works, any of the league officers will be happy to help explain it to you.
