Candlepin Bowling - Comparison To Ten-pin Bowling

Comparison To Ten-pin Bowling

Candlepin bowling was developed in 1880 in Worcester, Massachusetts by Justin White, a local bowling center owner, some years before both the standardization of the ten-pin sport in 1895 and the invention of duckpin bowling, said by some sources to have been invented the same year. Today the game is enjoyed in many diverse places such as California and Germany in addition to New England. As in other forms of bowling, the players roll balls down a wooden pathway (lane) to knock down as many pins as possible. The main differences between candlepin bowling and the predominant ten-pin bowling style are that each player uses three balls per frame (see below), the balls are much smaller (11.43 cm, or 4.5" diameter) and do not have holes. Also, the downed pins (known as 'wood') are not cleared away between balls during a player's turn and the pins are thinner, and thus harder to knock down. Because of these differences, scoring points is considerably more difficult than in ten-pin bowling, and the highest officially sanctioned score ever recorded is 245 out of a possible 300 points, by Ralph Semb in 1984, who is currently the head of the International Candlepin Bowling Association. This score was matched on May 13, 2011 by Chris Sargent of Haverhill, MA, at the Metro Bowl Lanes candlepin center in Peabody, MA, and accepted by the ICBA.