Strike (bowling)

[3] In American nine-pin bowling, a ringer is an equivalent term for knocking down all pins on the first ball of the frame (known as a full house).

Any longer string of strikes is referred to by a number affixed to the word "bagger" or "pack", as in "four-bagger" or "six-pack".

A string of four straight strikes is also known as a "hambone " a term invented by sports commentator Rob Stone.

A string of five strikes in a row is a "brat," referring to bratwurst, but "nickel," has become far more common in recent years.

Due to the difficulty of achieving a game of 300 or a series of 900, many bowling alleys maintain 300 and 900 club plaques.

A ten-pin bowling score sheet showing how a strike is scored
The number of sanctioned perfect (300) games per league bowler has increased substantially since the 1990s. Freeman and Hatfield posit that the increase in perfect games is due to factors such as the introduction of reactive resin coverstocks, asymmetric ball cores, synthetic lane surfaces, and precision lane oiling machines.
Bowling scores are generally linearly proportional to strike frequency, with substantial variance based on whether the strikes are consecutive, and based on the number of open frames versus spares.