Kudos and standings!

Allright, time for Kudos…..

(High games (more than 20 pins above your average) so far)

Esme with a 152

Agnes with a 157

Mabel Smith with a 132

Gus with a 224 (How great of him to get his highest game on the first night!!)

And…..I had one of my best games ever last night, a 166! YAY! Of course, my game after that I stunk up the place with 5 pins below my average, but finished the 3^rd game beating my average by nearly 20 pins.

Standings-before last night we were in 17^th place. In the middle, totally respectable!! Last night we played the “vacancy team”. Now, here’s the rules with the vacancy team – you’re essentially playing yourself. As a team, you have to be no less than 40 pins below your team (those who are playing) average, each game. You can beat your averages by however much you want, but you can’t lose to your team average by more than 40 pins. So, we all need to be no less than 10 pins below our own average, and if so, someone else on the team needs to make it up.

You’ll notice when you look at the scoresheet, that the Vacancy Team has a record of 0 - 28, but the truth is, they just don’t win any. People DO lose to them. The team next to us last night, the Sons of Dick Trickle, (they wear the racing shirts, are currently in 6^th place) said they only won one game against the Vacancy Team. Indeed, checking the scoresheet, that team only won 2 points. Wow, so we really CAN lose against the team that doesn’t exist! Crap!

Throw in a complication…its Abe’s first night bowling. So, pretty much, he needs to bowl the same all 3 games. No high game/low game for him, because he’s establishing his average. So, if he bowled a 110, 150, and a 120, that puts his average at 127. That means the game he bowled a 110 we’d be screwed because he is 17 pins below his average on that first game.

Man, can this get ANY harder?

Well, I think we pulled it off. Abe did an excellent job of bowling close together, and I helped out on the first game with my 166. Hoping I can really do arithmetic, I think we were within our team average by less than 40 pins and we won all 3 games. Which, has the potential to drive our standing up a couple spots! But, there is the chance I don’t fully understand the rules of the vacancy as they were explained to me, and we could’ve only won 1 or 2 games, so don’t hate me if that’s the case. ;)

Next up is Pearl, Thaddius, Agnes and Ethel!

Good luck and good bowling!

October Schedule

Here's the October schedule....let me know asap if you have issues!

Also, I owe a couple people kudos for good games last week, I just wasn't there so I need to check the score sheets. Stay tuned for an update later this week with high games so far and our overall placement.

Scoring Explained

Here’s the promised explanation of scoring:


Each night we play 3 games and there are 7 possible points in a night. Each person (once you establish an average) gets their individual handicap added to their score (see first post or link to the right for explanation on handicap). The individual scores are added together to have a team score, which is up against one other team’s score.

So, for example, a sample scoresheet might look like this:

So the pins we actually bowled (called “scratch score”) combined with our handicap is our total pins for that game. If our total pins beats their total pins for that game, we get 2 points. That’s 6 points and the other point is for total pins over all 3 games. So, in the example above, we won 2 games (4 points) plus total pins (1 point) for a total of 5 points. The other team won one game and got 2 points.

Confused yet???

Don’t worry if you don’t get it. If I’m not there, Esme can usually help or the other teams are usually good with helping too. I just wanted to have the explanation out there, so you have the info if you care!

Pearl's lack of excuses

Last night we bowled the other team we hang out with, the Malcontents. (We bowled them in our first league about 4 yrs ago and got along because they drank as much as we did!) I was a little worried; as Gus was supposed to tank and help bring his average down, because I knew he’d want to beat Tony. Tony, for the record, is a VERY good bowler-last yr his best game was a 290, but in the first part of the year he is on a golf league and thus is….well, not as “alert” as he could be, so he’s bowling more in the 180-215 range. Anyway, Gus ended up nearly beating him and having two good games-right around 200- and one bad game which brought his average down to around 190, which is STILL above where it should be, but that’s how it’s going to have to be. Let’s just hope Gus keeps it up and continues to get 200+ most games. :)


Esme did pretty good, I don’t have the score sheet right here but she beat her average/stayed pretty close to it for all 3 games – it’s the snazzy ball (gift from me, of course) and her tie dye shoes that do it. :P

It was Agnes’s first night and she had fun, did a good job of listening to instruction. She flirted with that foul line a bit too often but did pretty good in the last game and ended up with around a 97 average- a solid average to improve upon! (she just needs her own shoes and ball!!)

Me…man, I stank up the joint. And this time, I don’t even have the excuse of “trying to throw off”. I was SUPPOSED TO BOWL GOOD! Instead, I got an 80 on my first game. Yes, and EIGHTY- I just couldn’t hit my mark for the life of me and my spare ball is totally gone-I even dropped the ball twice! Ug. My “high game” was a 109. (normally I am a 120ish bowler, when I was bowling often, I was up to a 135 average) I think my average might have even gone DOWN a pin or two. So, I’ll be hitting the lanes this weekend to practice, that’s for damn sure.

Even with my colossal flop, we still managed to win 2 out of 3 games and took total pins, so we got 5 out of 7 points. This is, of course assuming Tony figured out everything using bowling scorekeeping and not golf scores!!! (Which, speaking of points and pins and scores, I guess I need to elaborate on that. I’ll explain in another post this week) So, we’re probably hovering around the middle as placements go, (here are around 30 teams, by the way) but we really can’t count anything as real placements until all of us establish an average.

Hopefully my practice helps me get my game back!!! Next week-Pearl, Gus, Mabel, and Thaddius!

How NOT to get a strike

Last night was a good time!! Here's the recap:

Gus, well......he came out WAY too strong the first game and got a 224. To quote him "I'm not even aiming...I can't help it, I just keep throwing strikes". Poor guy. But really, here's a tip for ya....THROW IT IN THE GUTTER next time. I'm positive you will NOT get a strike if you throw it in the gutter. His next game he lost his strike ball and bowled a 155 but by the 3rd game he was figuring both the strike and the spare ball out and got a 204. So, his average is sitting high and pretty at the 195 mark. Bastard.

Esme, despite her best efforts to get a 92 average, "failed" and got a 117 average ;) so she'll have a decent handicap. Ethel and myself, well, we will have REALLY good handicaps. (averages 95-96). As you imagine, there weren't many times we found our strikeball, but we snuck a few in. My average has nowhere to go but up, which I intend on bowling SIGNIFICANTLY better next week.

We won one game, so that's good!

Next week, Esme, Agnes, Gus and Pearl (me) are up. See you at 6:40-good luck and good bowling!!!