How many pins are in bowling?
Ten-pin bowling uses 10 pins arranged in a triangle, with one pin at the front, then rows of two, three and four. The goal is to knock down as many as possible.
The pins are numbered 1 to 10, starting with the head pin at the front. They stand about 30 centimeters apart, measured from center to center, on the pin deck at the end of a lane about 18 meters long. Each pin is about 38 centimeters tall and weighs about 1.5 kilograms.
Players get two tries in each frame to knock down all 10 pins. A game has 10 frames. Hitting the pocket, the space between the 1 and 3 pins for right-handed bowlers, gives the best chance of a strike.
Why ten pins?
Earlier forms of bowling in Europe and America used nine pins. According to a popular story, when some US states banned ninepin bowling in the 1800s because of gambling, players added a tenth pin to get around the law. Ten-pin bowling became the standard in the United States by the late 1800s.
Did You Know?
Other bowling games use different numbers of pins. Five-pin bowling, invented in Canada in 1909, uses five smaller pins.