Robert Mushtare

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Robert Mushtare is a 17 year-old youth bowler from Carthage, NY who has allegedly bowled an unprecedented three perfect 900 series during pre-bowling sessions for his league and two more perfect 900 series in practice. The pre-bowling sessions were bowled on November 5th and December 3rd of 2005, and February 19, 2006, all at Pine Plains Bowling Center. Pine Plains Bowling Center is a recreation facility located on the Fort Drum Army installation. After months of investigation, two of his 900 series were officially certified by the United States Bowling Congress in June 2006.

Robert is the first youth bowler to shoot a sanctioned 900 series, and the only bowler with two sanctioned 900 series. Robert is the 10th person to bowl a certified 900 series, and the first from New York state in the 111-year history of certified league bowling.

The first of Robert's three 900 series was rejected by the USBC because the league he was bowling in was not certified on the date his 900 series was rolled. Due to the order of USBC sanctioning procedures, it will never be known if it would have been approved even if his league had been sanctioned at the time.

The editors at Bowler's Journal International estimate that the odds of one individual bowling two 900 series in a lifetime as 12,900,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1. Incidentally, no professional bowler has ever bowled a perfect 900 series in PBA competition or during league play.

Many bowlers believe that Robert may have cheated. With collusion, conditioner may have been applied to the lanes in such a way as to guide the ball to the pocket and enhance pincarry. Discounting any possibility of collusion, all popular automatic scoring systems can (with varying degrees of required knowledge, skill, and system access) be rigged in such a way to count a strike for every ball rolled. On some automatic scorers - mainly older models such as AMF's AccuScore - minimal knowledge and skill, along with access to a scoring console (the same console names, handicaps, and blinds are entered through, usually available for every pair of lanes) are the only prerequisites to rigging the system to score a strike for every ball. The result of such rigging is undetectable once the games have been bowled: unlike score-changes and handicap/blind tricks, the machine itself is 'fooled' into believing ten pins have fallen on every throw. On July 30, 2006, Robert was featured in a story titled "Pinning Down The Truth" on the ESPN show Outside The Lines.

At the 2006 Junior Gold Championships in July, a tournament for youth bowlers, Robert averaged 185 for his 18 games and finished in 283rd place. In those 18 games, Robert had 6 games over 200 with a high game of 222. Robert currently averages about 250 in his junior bowling league, and 211 on New York State's Youth Bowling Tour. He hopes to join the PBA Tour some day.

Two months after sanctioning Robert's 900 series, the USBC changed it's rules and will no longer issue High Score awards for scores rolled during unopposed bowling sessions before or after regularly scheduled league times. According to USBC President Michael Carroll, "Issuing USBC High Score awards for scores bowled unopposed has become a growing concern. The objective of this rule change is to protect the credibility of the sport and the USBC awards program."