Ten-pin bowling Bowling Championships. Ten-pin bowling has an international ranking system, as with many professional individual sports. This ten-pin equivalent is known as the World Ranking Masters and is made of three vast tours: the European, Americas and Asian bowling tours. Other minor tournaments, although major in their respective countries, include Britain's prestigious BTBA Nationals (BTBA National Championships), the Brunswick Ballmaster Open, Brunswick Euro Challenge in Greece, ETBF European Youth Championships, the European Gold Cup and the Mediterranean Challenge Cup. The world's premier amateur event is the WB/WTBA World Championships (World Bowling) which has been running since 1954 and is now held
Nine-pin bowling the United States, as well as regionally popular "small-ball" bowling sports of various types, do not have many facilities in existence for the nine-pin game in the 21st century. On the other hand, a modified version is played in the US state of Texas. This game is played by rolling a ball down an alley towards nine pins. Unlike the ten-pin ball — and like the ones used for the eastern North American "small-ball" bowling sports of five pin bowling, candlepin and duckpin — the ninepin ball mostly has no holes for the fingers, though there exist special balls with