Bowls
Flat-green singles, on a rink forty metres long. The player who won the last end places the mat and rolls the jack, then each side rolls four bowls in turn, and every bowl bends as it slows because a bowl is made lopsided. The green is tuned to play well; it is not a simulation of any club's green.
The rules
- The mat is placed anywhere from two to fifteen metres up the green from the rear ditch, and the jack is rolled from it. The mat and the jack are one move: set the mat with the slider, then roll.
- A jack that stops less than twenty-three metres from the mat, runs off the side of the rink or into the ditch is improper, and your opponent rolls it instead. If theirs is improper too, the jack is placed two metres from the far ditch and you play first from your own mat.
- Each side rolls four bowls an end, alternately, the player who rolled the jack first. A bowl is a line, a weight and a hand: on the forehand it curls one way and on the backhand the other, and the aiming guide shows the path before you roll.
- A bowl is dead if it stops less than fourteen metres from the mat without touching anything, if it comes to rest off the side of the rink, or if it goes into the ditch. A bowl whose path runs outside the rink and comes back to rest inside it is alive.
- If the jack is driven into the ditch, off the rink, or back to less than twenty metres from the mat, the end is dead: it is played again from the same mat, the same player rolling the jack.
- When all eight bowls have been rolled, the side with the bowl nearest the jack scores one shot for each of its bowls nearer than the other side's nearest. If the two nearest bowls are exactly level, nobody scores.
- The winner of an end places the mat and rolls the jack for the next.
How a game ends
- The first player to twenty-one shots wins. Shots scored past twenty-one are not counted.
- A resignation or a missed deadline ends the game against that player.
Worth knowing before you start
- A draw is the whole game. Aim wide of the jack, on the side the hand you chose curls in from, and let the bias bring the bowl back: the guide draws exactly that path.
- A long jack rewards the player with better weight; a short one keeps the ends tight. The mat moves too, and a mat far up the green shortens every end.
- A drive at full weight barely curls. It can knock the jack back to your bowls, or into the ditch for a dead end, which is worth having only when you are lying badly.
- The status line says who lies how many. Read it before every bowl: a second bowl behind the jack is often worth more than a third at the front.
What is different here
- The ditch is dead ground. A bowl that touched the jack before going in is not a toucher and does not stay in play, and nothing rebounds off the bank.
- The jack is rolled at the size of a bowl, so it can be struck and driven, but it curls nothing.
- The green is tuned so that the game reads right: how far a bowl bends and how fast the green plays are the site's numbers and not a measurement.
The seed decides who rolls the first jack, and nothing else; it is published when the game ends. The bowls themselves are physics, not chance.
Bowls terms
- The jack
- The small white ball everything is measured from. Rolled from the mat to start each end.
- The mat
- Where every delivery starts. Placed by the player who rolls the jack, two to fifteen metres from the rear ditch.
- A shot
- A point: one for each bowl nearer the jack than the other side's best.
- The forehand and the backhand
- The two sides a bowl can be rolled on; the bias curls it toward the centre from either.
- The head
- The jack and the bowls round it, at the far end of the rink.