A season's worth of errors....and it's my fault?!
 

Worked an all-church tournament this past Sunday. At the beginning of a game, a coach asked how many timeouts she would get. The scorer said ten. I was there and said huh? Apparently, these scorers were told that it was five timeouts per half and had been running with that all season. Also, at the end of one of the games, another coach ripped me because his team had been whistled for nine fouls in the fourth quarter, which is fine, but the other team never shot bonus free throws because the score keepers only showed five fouls in the book during the second half. We would report a foul, and would ask bonus? and they'd look at us with those blank looks as if they'd never heard of the word bonus.

So eight games brought enough grief and hell from all these God-fearing fans in the bleachers; plus we got to endure some of the incompetence from the scorer's bench. At least they paid in cash.

It seems that at some point you just knew it had to be bonus, but you still took the word from a table crew who said that teams get 10 timeouts?

And by 10, I don't mean two! ;)

Ask "How many fouls?" instead -- it forces them to look at the book and give an answer rather than just a "yes" or "no." Plus, if they report 5, then you can usually keep track of the next two.

And Always Listen To bob, He's What You Call An Expert ...
 

Agree. Never ask, "Are we in the bonus?".

Point well taken, should have known since these folks aren't the usual experienced folk that we're use to working with.

This score board was an older one and didn't have a place to keep track of fouls for the bonus. It only had a red dot that lit up if a team was in the bonus.

Not to worry.
After a bit, you'll be able to prevent most table problems by merely gazing into the table folks' glazed eyes in order to tell if someone is in there or if someone is elsewhere. :)