Play Bowling with Cards There are 156 cards in the deck, consisting of: Number cards (1 to 9) Strike/Spare cards Gutterball cards Hole cards (that's an 8 ) Joker cards There are different ways to play the game. version 1: Every player gets 21 cards and has to combine them as good as possible in one serie of Bowling version 2: Player starts with 5 cards and then plays 1 of them and discard one card. Before next turn player draws 2 cards and one of the cards can be the top card from discard pile, it's not allowed to discard holecards or gutterball cards