Games · Bowling

Bowling: free online ten-pin bowling game

A proper lane, with wooden boards, arrows, gutters and ten pins that crash into each other. Pick your spot on the foul line, roll the ball with a swipe and add hook to find the pocket. Against the computer at three levels, two players on one device, solo, spare practice or the daily challenge. Free, no account needed.

How to play

• Drag the ball left or right to choose where it leaves the foul line. Then swipe up quickly towards the lane arrow you want to cross: the faster the swipe, the faster the ball rolls. A swipe that curves at the end adds hook, and the Hook bar below the lane sets your base hook. On a computer you can do the same with the mouse, or use the keyboard: ← → (or Q and P) for position, A and D to aim, Z and X for hook, and hold the space bar to fill the power meter, then let go to roll.
• A game has 10 frames, with up to two balls each. A strike (all ten pins with the first ball) is worth 10 plus the pins from your next two balls. A spare (all ten with two balls) is worth 10 plus the pins from your next ball. In an open frame you just count the pins knocked down. In the 10th frame a strike earns two extra balls and a spare one more. The maximum is 300: twelve strikes in a row.
• A hooking ball runs almost straight on the oil and only curves once the oil ends, about two thirds of the way down. The best entry is the pocket, between the 1 and 3 pins when the ball hooks left (or the 1 and 2 when it hooks right). If the head pin falls and the pins left are apart, that is a split, like the famous 7-10.
• Against the computer, take on Tico (easy), Leonor (normal) or Barros (hard). Spare practice gives you ten set-ups with pins already standing. In the daily challenge you bowl 3 frames on today’s oil, the same for everyone: the last frame has bonus balls and the maximum is 90. Only your first game of the day goes on the leaderboard.

Where this game comes from

Games of knocking down pins with a ball have existed in Europe for centuries. In Germany people played nine-pins from the Middle Ages, and European immigrants took these games to the United States. There, during the 19th century, the version with ten pins in a triangle took hold. It is often said that the tenth pin was added to get around laws banning nine-pins, but there is no solid evidence for that.

In 1895 the American Bowling Congress was founded in New York and standardised the rules and the sizes of lanes and pins. For a long time pins were reset by hand by pinboys hidden at the end of the lane; from the 1950s automatic machines spread, like the one you see sweeping the fallen pins in this game.

Free game, no betting and no prizes. Your game is saved on this device.