Scoring and Prizes in Lawn Bowling Tournaments

Relative Values and Number of Prizes

It seems the convenor of a lawn bowling tournament needs to ask some rather philosophical questions when deciding how to award prize money. The simplest approach is to decide how many prizes will be awarded and then divide the money into that number of graduated packages depending upon a predetermined scoring scheme. This works fine for open tournaments where the entrants are focussed on winning and not the socializing and encouragement for newer bowlers. For club events which seek more of these latter elements I think a different prize structure is needed.

  

Recently, I was the convenor for several club lawn bowling tournaments. There were only two games in these events which was not enough to produce a single undefeated tournament winner. It was my judgment that entrants had not signed up primarily to win prize money. They were looking for the pleasure of bowling in a competitive environment. I also decided that an objective would be to retain for every team the chance to win some prize for as long as possible during the play.

In a club game I encourage all bowlers to stay for the presentation of the prizes in the clubhouse, by having a draw from among all the participant teams who have not won a prize that day. To qualify for the prize, however, all the members of that team must still be on the premises. If the team is incomplete, another winner is drawn. The prize should be as great as the smallest merit prize.

Adjusting Scores to Account for Another Competitor’s Unrealistic Chance Taking

In order to win most tournaments a team must win all its games. A team that believes it has a realistic chance to top all the participants, if it finds itself behind in one of its matches with only two ends remaining, may take extraordinary risks to try to make up the deficit and get a win. Very often this chance-taking allows its opposition to accrue an undeservedly large number of extra points. This unusual number of extra points can give the team that is playing against the desperate one, sufficient points to win the tournament even where their skill does not merit it.

A way to avoid this situation is to record the points-for after the (n-2)th end while logging the winning team only after the full n ends are finished.

Let me give an example of this. Team A is playing Team B. Each match is 16 ends. Neither Team A nor Team B to this point in the tournament have any losses. But after 14 ends Team B is 15-12 ahead of Team A. Team A is nevertheless very confident that, if it can save this match, it can win the tournament and get the first prize money. Team A realizes that it must make up 3 points in 2 ends. Therefore, Team A plays some high-risk shots trying to score 2 points in the 11th end. In fact, it goes down 1, and starting the 12th end Team B leads 16-14. Now team A must be even more daring, trying to score 4 points to tie and force an extra end. Because they are forced to again try low-percentage, desperate measures they actually end up down 5. Team B has picked up 6 points in the last two ends and finishes winning 21-14. Team B ends up winning all its matches and its 21 points-for versus Team A enables it to break a tie for top spot and win the tournament.

If Team B’s game score was determined after 14 ends (15-12 ) and only its W counted after 16 ends, Team B might quite likely not have ranked first in the tournament. Team B won essentially because Team A took low-percentage chances in an effort to win its game and Team B benefitted. 

Breaking Ties in Awarding Prizes

For the in-club tournaments where I am convener, very frequently only two games are played and often the number of ends in each game is not really enough to overcome the inherent luck of the game. This is unavoidable; however, in awarding prizes, once the number of wins and total regular points-for have been applied, there is still frequently more than one team tied in rank. Plus points (any points won in a game > 1.5 X the number of ends); for example in a 12-end game plus points would be those more than 18 ) are often used to break these ties. I have found this to be a very unfair differentiator because the team that earns these points usually does so because it has drawn, by luck, a particularly weak opponent in the first game.

I have experimented with more imaginative ways to break ties in the final ranking of bowls teams.

Performance of 1st Opponent in the 2nd Round

If the team your side played in the first round, won its 2nd round match, while the team you are tied with, played an opponent in the first round that lost its 2nd round match; then your team perhaps should be ranked higher, since it seems more likely that your side played a superior first-round opponent.

This is a bit complicated so let’s look at a specific example. Two teams, A and B, are tied after playing two games. Each one has 2 wins and 16 points-for. Team A defeated Team C in the first round. Team C was paired against Team D (best vs best based on W/L and points-for) in the second round and secured a win. Team B defeated Team E in the first round but Team E lost its 2nd round match against Team F.  Using this method, Team A is ranked ahead of Team B in awarding prizes. It seems its first-round opponent C was stronger than E that lost its 2nd round match.

Now suppose instead Teams C and E both either won or both lost their second matches; what do you do now? You look at the points-for of Teams C and E in their second-round matches. If Team C has more, then Team A is ranked higher. If Team E has more points-for in its second-round match, then Team B is ranked higher.

This method of breaking ranking ties addresses the situation where your side gets a more difficult opponent in the first round. You still must win to get prize money but in the case of a ranking tie at the finish of all the games, the subsequent superior performance of your difficult first-round opponent will help your side.

Ends Lost by 3 or More

Lawn Bowls is a game where consistency is important. If two teams are tied in the final ranking, the more consistent team should be preferred. To measure this consistency the scores in all the ends of all the games for each of the two tied teams are examined. A count is made of the ends in which each team lost an end by 3 or more shots. The team that had the fewest of these ‘breakdown’ ends is judged the higher ranking.

For example, Teams A and B are tied according to games won and total points-for (plus points not included). Team A in its two games had only 1 end when their opponents scored >= 3. In contrast, Team B had 0 occasions when their opponents scored >=3. Team B would be considered the higher ranking of the two. Team B seems slightly more consistent.