I wonder Does the beer add or reduce bias? Lisa McMurray Canada -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Crawford MacKeand Sent: Friday, December 17, 2010 2:25 PM To: Ian A McClumpha; [email protected] Subject: Re: [WIG LIST] carpet bools I can't resist adding to the complications here. I think I have found on the web that there are Indoor Bowls, Short-Mat or English Short-Mat Bowls and Carpet Bowls, and as far as I can see the tendency is to divergence. Carpet Bowls appear to have bias, and to have no bias, and maybe some of the web sources are biased in this matter. Certainly a set of biased carpet bowls is presently for sale on e-Bay and the set that we own here is very biased. Indoor Bowls seem to have taken over New Zealand, while the Short-Mat etc. differences are much too complicated for me. My own experience is all with outdoor bowls, of the rink, or lawn, or crown-green persuasions. Rink or lawn bowls are played here in the state of Delaware, while I have seen them also in England in Lancashire near Blackpool, in the north of Yorkshire, in New Zealand near Rotorua, and on the Clyde coast where my aunt was an avid player in Ardrossan. However, I will claim that none of these varieties holds a candle to crown-green bowls, played in a swath of England roughly from Chester to south Yorkshire, and up and down a bit. No lines are required on the green, no lanes exist, no direction is specified for play, and games cross and intercross. Collisions do occur, but are managed. Also the jack is smaller, but brown and biased. No white jacks!! The big square green has a rise in the middle (the crown), maybe as much as a foot, and one can play square-peg (the wood's bias counteracting the crown bias) or round-peg (where the biases aid). There is a ditch, known as the "hoggin". When I lived in Cheshire, we (the social club of the plant where I worked) played in a league, and as I remember, all the other clubs were pub-based. The standards, both for beer and for bowling, were high, very high. I wonder which of these varieties is alive and well in Galloway today. Crown green I'd hope. :-) Crawford. ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message