Bowldle · Guide
How to pick up spares: the 10 pin, the 7 pin and more
Strikes win games, but spares keep your score up. Most bowlers lose more pins to missed single-pin spares than to anything else. The fix is a simple system you can repeat.
Throw spares straight
A hook is great for strikes and unpredictable for spares. To pick up a single pin, you want a ball that goes exactly where you aim. Many bowlers carry a second, plastic ball that barely hooks just for spares. If you only have one ball, flatten your release: keep your hand behind the ball and don't rotate it.
Shoot across the lane
For a pin on one side, start on the opposite side of the approach and roll the ball diagonally across the lane. Crossing the lane gives you the most room for error, because the pin sits in the middle of your path instead of next to the gutter.
- The 10 pin (back right corner): stand well left on the approach and roll straight across to the right corner. For right-handers this is the most-missed spare in bowling, because a hooking ball runs away from it.
- The 7 pin (back left corner): stand well right and roll across to the left corner.
The 3-6-9 system
Many bowlers use a system so they don't have to guess:
- Find your strike line: where you stand and which arrow you roll over.
- For a spare one pin over from the head pin, move your feet 3 boards the opposite way and keep the same target arrow. Move 6 boards for two pins over, and 9 boards for three pins over.
- Right-handers move left to hit pins on the right (the 3, 6 and 10), and right to hit pins on the left. Left-handers do the opposite.
Pins are 12 inches apart and a lane board is about 1 inch wide, so shifting your feet a few boards while keeping the same target swings the ball's path across the pin deck.
Leaves with more than one pin
Aim for the key pin: the one closest to you. Hit it on the correct side and it either falls into the pins behind it or the ball carries through them.
- 2-4-5 or 3-5-6 (bucket): aim at the front pin, slightly toward the middle of the cluster.
- 1-2-4-7 or 1-3-6-10 (washout): hit the head pin on its outside edge, so it slides into the pins behind it.
- Splits like the 4-6 or 7-10 are low-percentage. Unless you need the points, roll at one pin and take it. A guaranteed 9 beats a likely 8.
Spares in Bowldle
The same rules work in the game: set the Hook slider to Straight, line up on the opposite side, and aim straight at the pin. A straight ball picks up single pins every time. Bowldle also shows a circled number on the scoresheet when your first ball leaves a split, just like a real alley. See how spares are scored.