Side action is where a session makes its margin and where the arithmetic goes wrong fastest. J&K Brackets Pro runs your side pots in the same session as your brackets and works the payouts from what was actually collected.
A side pot is the simplest form of bowling side action: everybody who pays in goes into one pool, the scores are ranked, and the top finishers take the money. There is no head-to-head draw and no elimination — unlike a bracket, where eight bowlers are matched against each other over three rounds.
Because a pot has one pool and one ranking, it is the easiest side action to sell and the easiest to administer. It is also the format most often sold late, because a bowler can join right up until the first ball without disturbing anything that has already been built.
Most houses sell several at once — a scratch high game, a handicap high game, and often a series pot alongside them. Each is a separate pool with its own entries and its own payout.
Side pots are not a separate event in the program. They sit in the same session as your brackets, share the same entry list, and appear in the same session totals — so the money in the drawer reconciles against one set of numbers rather than several.
Scratch and handicap pots stay separate where they should be. Each carries its own entry fee and payout structure, and the program never quietly merges the two — a mixed pot is the fastest way to make whichever side loses feel cheated.
Payouts are worked from the actual pool. Enter the entries and the fee, and the program shows what the pot holds and what each place pays before you commit to it. Nothing is promised to the room that the pool cannot cover.
This is the judgement a pot needs and a bracket mostly does not. A three-round bracket has one winner worth naming; a high-game pot might have a hundred entries in it.
Pay one place out of a hundred and you have wasted the field — ninety-nine people paid for nothing and most will not pay again. Pay twenty places and each cheque is too small to be worth the walk to the desk. Most operators land on paying roughly one place per ten to fifteen entries, publish the structure with the entry fee, and adjust it once they see how their own field responds.
Whatever you choose, publish it before entries are sold, along with the retain and the tie rule. Bowling bracket payouts explained covers all three.
Beyond straight pots, the add-on formats cover the side action operators actually ask for — reverse brackets, mystery pot, eliminator and blind doubles — each with its own payout handling, in the same program as your brackets. The side action guide explains when each one is worth adding.
This runs inside the same session as your brackets and side pots. You are not exporting to a second tool or keeping a separate sheet — entries, scores, counts and payouts all live in one place, and the printed reports come out of the same program, so the drawer reconciles against one set of session totals rather than several.
The free demo is the complete program, not a limited trial — every feature unlocked, capped at 16 bowlers per session so you can see exactly how it works.
Download the free demo See pricingA pot where everyone who pays in goes into one pool, scores are ranked, and the top finishers take the money. Unlike a bracket there is no head-to-head draw and no elimination — it is simply the best scores in the pool.
A side pot ranks everybody in one pool on score. A bracket matches eight bowlers against each other over three rounds, with the higher game winning each match. Pots are simpler to run; brackets usually sell in larger volume because bowlers buy several at once.
Yes, and they should be kept as separate pools with their own entry fees and payout structures. Merging them means whichever side loses feels the format was against them.
Enough that the field feels worth entering without making each payout trivial. A common approach is roughly one paying place per ten to fifteen entries. Whatever you choose, publish it with the entry fee before entries are sold.
In J&K Brackets Pro they do. Side pots share the session and the entry list with the brackets and appear in the same session totals, so the drawer reconciles against one set of numbers.