WinBowl is a powerful Tenpin Bowling League Management program that's easy to use and easy to understand
WinBowl is shareware. This means that you are allowed to download it and use it for evaluation purposes for a period of 28 days. If you continue to use it after that, you should register it. Details of how to do that are included in the program. The file you download is an install program. Simply run it and WinBowl will be installed on your computer. In the unlikely event that you do not wish to continue using WinBowl, an uninstall program is also supplied.
When a change is made to the rules of the league, its effects are immediately applied to the entire league to date. If a score in an early round is changed the effects it may have in a handicap league immediately ripple through, with all matches being re-scored. This gives great freedom to try ‘what if’ scenarios such as "What if the handicap percentage was to be changed?", "What if the defaulted match rules are changed?", etc.
Teams - Teams may have from 1 to 5 bowling members, with up to a user specified maximum number of bowlers registered to each team. The league may have between 4 and 50 teams. Transferring players between teams may be done at any time, and players who are not registered to a specific team are available to any team as a floating substitute. Additional teams may be added or teams may be withdrawn mid season.
Matches - Matches may consist if a 1, 2, 3, or 4 game series. Multiple rounds may be played on the same date, and if the league bowls at multiple venues, a venue can be assigned to each round. Records for venues contain facilities for directions on how to get to the venue, as well as the address and telephone number. The program will also handle a split season.
Scoring – Points can be assigned separately for each game and series, and pyramid scoring and Petersen points are supported on and combination.
Players - Players may be defined by gender, junior/senior status, and additionally by user defined bowler categories. All league awards may be subdivided by these categories. There are also facilities to record comprehensive details about each player if desired. Individual performance records are also available for each bowler.
Handicaps - Handicap leagues can feature rolling averages for the whole season, or for the last user specified number of games. Separate handicap systems may be used for male, female and junior bowlers. 'Drop 5' is available to registered users. Team handicaps can be either absolute, or a 'zero based' difference
Reports - the user designs the standings reports. These give you the ability to include as much or as little as you want. Users can save multiple reports for different purposes. There are also comprehensive reports available for both teams and players. The reports are displayed on the screen exactly as they will be printed - sometimes referred to as WYSIWIG.
Awards - You may specify specific awards that are available for your league, and record and report them. There are two broad categories of awards, ‘Manual’ and ‘Automatic’.
Manual Awards cater for things such as ‘5 strikes in a row’, ‘Dutch 200 games’, and other achievements that are not apparent from the scores entered. These have to be manually assigned to a bowler when entering or amending the fixture during which the award was achieved.
Automatic Awards are specified generically, and then detected and a record made by WinBowl. These include things such as games over 250 etc., and Series over 700 etc.
Bonus points - You may specify bonus points that are available to either individuals or teams, which are automatically scored. These are for either specific scores, scores relative to averages, or for winning all points in a match.
Blind Scores - Blind scores may be a flat value, a percentage of the players average, or the players average less a specified number of pins.
Vacancy Provision - A vacancy may be populated with 'robot' bowlers who will bowl the opponents average modified by either a percentage or a specified number of pins, or a flat score.
Lane allocation - Lane allocation will handle split blocks of lanes, multiple matches per lane, or the situation where there are more teams than lanes, and the league has to bowl in 2 sessions. If the standard lane schedule is not what you want, the schedule may be edited before the league starts.
Treasurer assistance - the program will track arrears either by teams or individuals, and the registered version has a full accounting package.
If you require additional scoring systems or additional features, please feel free to ask for them. All suggestions (as many users have found) will be given serious consideration for inclusion in future releases.
Email any comments to mailto: godfrey@winbowl.com
This page is maintained by Godfrey Small. Last modified on 22 Nov 2005.