Bowling Score Calculator

How ten-pin scoring works

A game has 10 frames. In each of the first nine frames you get up to two rolls to knock down all ten pins; the tenth frame can have a third roll as a bonus. The catch is the bonus rules:

• Open frame (you leave pins standing): score = the pins you knocked down.
• Spare (/, all ten down across two rolls): score = 10 + your next 1 roll.
• Strike (X, all ten on the first roll): score = 10 + your next 2 rolls.

Because bonuses reach forward, three strikes in a row (“a turkey”) bank a full 30 in the first of those frames.

Worked example

Suppose you roll: X 7 / 9 - X X X 2 3 6 / 7 / X. The frames score like this:

Frame 1 = 10 + (7 + spare fill) ... — but it is easier to read the running total below.

Frame-by-frame reference

A clean perfect game (X twelve times) totals 300: each of the ten scoring frames is worth 30.

Pitfalls to avoid

• A spare needs the next roll, a strike needs the next two. Forgetting the second bonus ball on a strike is the classic error that undercounts a game.
• The tenth frame is special. A strike or spare there earns bonus balls in the same frame, not from a future frame — so a perfect tenth can read X X X.
• / always means exactly ten across the pair, regardless of the first ball. A 9 / is still a spare worth 10 plus the next roll, not 19.