Bowling Solitaire

Contributed by Kimberly Mullen

This is a relatively simple game - much simpler than Sid Sackson's Bowling Solitaire. It uses a standard deck of 52 cards with 2 Jokers. The Jokers are optional but without them the difficulty is increased.

The table layout is ten face up cards overlapping in a standard ten pin formation with four cards at the top, three in the next row, two in the next and finally one on the bottom.

The remaining cards are dealt three at a time with only the top card showing.

The object of the game is to remove cards from the table layout in combinations adding up to ten points.

All royal cards are worth 10 points, the rest are their face value. (Aces are one point). Jokers are wild - they can be counted as any number of points from 1 to 10.

All ten point cards can be removed from the table and discard pile immediately. The rest must be paired to add up to ten, for example 9-ace, 8-2, 7-3, etc. A Joker can be paired with any card.

It is not possible to remove more than two cards at a time - even if you have three or four cards that add up to 10 such as 5-3-2 or A-A-2-6, you cannot remove them.

If the table is cleared on the first pass of the deck, you score a strike on the score sheet. If all cards are not cleared then you mark how many were removed on the score sheet.

Deal the remaining discard pile once more like you did the first time. If you clear the remainder of the cards, mark a spare, If not mark how many were removed.

Continue this process through ten "frames" scoring each frame using standard bowling methods.