A turn is not a game
The word throughput gets used for both and they are different quantities that move in opposite directions. A lane turn is one party on one lane from arrival to departure, changeover included. At the defaults — five bowlers, two games each, a lane completing 6.5 bowler-games an hour and twelve minutes of changeover — a turn takes 104 minutes and a six hour session holds three of them, with 47 minutes left over that are not enough for a fourth.
Three turns a lane is fifteen bowlers and thirty games. Across 24 lanes that is 360 bowlers and 720 games, which is five games per lane hour.
Bigger parties, fewer turns, more games
Run the party size column and the trade is plain. A party of two takes 30 minutes and a lane fits twelve turns, serving 24 bowlers and selling 48 games. A party of eight takes 160 minutes, fits two turns, serves sixteen bowlers and sells 32 games. Fewer bowlers, fewer games — because the whole-turn rounding throws away 40 minutes at the end.
The smooth version is the last column, bowler-games per lane hour, which never falls as the party grows: 4.00 at a party of two, 5.44 at five, 6.00 at eight. That is the changeover being amortised. Twelve minutes is 40 percent of a two-person turn and 8 percent of an eight-person one. The whole-turn count is where the rounding bites, and it is why a house that fills lanes with couples on a slow night is not obviously wrong to do it.
The rate is the number nobody has
Everything on the page hangs on bowler-games per lane hour, and almost nobody has measured it. It is not a property of bowling; it is a property of who is on the lane. A works outing that has never bowled will crawl, a Thursday league will not. Guessing 6.5 when the truth is 5 makes every figure here 30 percent optimistic, and it will look precise while it does it.
What it cannot see
There is no queue in this model. It assumes a party is standing there when a lane frees, which is true for two hours on a Saturday and false the rest of the week. The late-start percentage is a blunt correction for that and nothing more — knock 15 percent off and the 360 bowlers become 306. If your problem is that lanes sit empty at 7pm and there is a forty minute wait at 9pm, that is a distribution problem and this page averages it away.
Questions people ask
What exactly counts as one lane turn?
One party occupying one lane from the moment they take it until the next party can bowl — the games, the settling in and the changeover after them. It is not one game and it is not one booking. A party of five bowling two games is one turn containing ten bowler-games.
How do I measure bowler-games per lane hour?
Pick three lanes on a busy night, note the time a party starts and finishes, and count the bowlers and games off the lane computer. Bowler-games divided by lane hours is the figure. Do it on the night you actually care about, because a Saturday and a Tuesday will differ by more than any input on this page.
Why do the turns and the games move in opposite directions with party size?
Because the changeover is paid once per turn regardless of how many people were on the lane. A bigger party spreads that fixed cost over more bowler-games, so the effective rate rises even as the number of turns falls. The table prints both so the trade can be seen instead of argued.
Does this account for people waiting for a lane?
No. It assumes a party is ready whenever a lane frees, which overstates a quiet night badly. The late-start percentage is the only correction and it is a flat one. Real arrival patterns need a real queueing model, and this is not one.