Do you get worse or better as the night progresses?

[Aslan]

Oh, and here's my SUPER line from last night....

234, 138 (season low!), 216

FML

Did you switch balls and start using a spare ball to get back to the 216?

But seriously, I've had games like that. I threw a 108 in practice Monday. Usually it's just one of those games where you seem to get split after split after split. I mean…I don't care if you're a PRO bowler…splits are splits.

[J Anderson]

Nice bowling!

Oh, and here's my SUPER line from last night....

234, 138 (season low!), 216

FML

Thanks.
Nice comeback in the third game!

[J Anderson]

Did you switch balls and start using a spare ball to get back to the 216?

But seriously, I've had games like that. I threw a 108 in practice Monday. Usually it's just one of those games where you seem to get split after split after split. I mean…I don't care if you're a PRO bowler…splits are splits.

The more I get into trying to understand this game the more I realize that there are almost no undeserved splits. With few exceptions they are the result of either poorly thrown balls or not staying ahead of the oil transition. I used to think that all those 5-7 and 5-10 splits that I left ( especially when our league moved from Broadriver Lanes to Circle Lanes )were just bad luck, Now I understand that anytime I hit my mark and the 5 pin is left up I need to adjust.

[Aslan]

The more I get into trying to understand this game the more I realize that there are almost no undeserved splits.

Agreed…but that can be said for any leave. If you hit the pocket perfectly, they all fall down. If you don't; they don't.

I think the "luck" factors in with splits because if you leave a 5-pin, or a 6-10, or a 7-pin, or a 10-pin…an above average bowler still has a shot at 11 pins. But if you have a 7-10 or a 4-7-10 or a 4-7-6-10…your 20 pins quickly becomes 8-9. You may have hit the headpin straight on…which is actually LESS of a miss than going Brooklyn…yet the Brooklyn gets a strike or leaves an easy spare…and the center hit leaves an impossible split.

I think splits are the big equalizer (other than handicap) because if you're up against a guy who is on a TERROR….and he gets a split…now you got a "shot" because you know he's going to open. If it wasn't for splits…the good bowlers would rarely NOT have a clean game.

[MICHAEL]

Agreed…but that can be said for any leave. If you hit the pocket perfectly, they all fall down. If you don't; they don't.

I think the "luck" factors in with splits because if you leave a 5-pin, or a 6-10, or a 7-pin, or a 10-pin…an above average bowler still has a shot at 11 pins. But if you have a 7-10 or a 4-7-10 or a 4-7-6-10…your 20 pins quickly becomes 8-9. You may have hit the headpin straight on…which is actually LESS of a miss than going Brooklyn…yet the Brooklyn gets a strike or leaves an easy spare…and the center hit leaves an impossible split.

I think splits are the big equalizer (other than handicap) because if you're up against a guy who is on a TERROR….and he gets a split…now you got a "shot" because you know he's going to open. If it wasn't for splits…the good bowlers would rarely NOT have a clean game.

WHAT did you just say!!! OVER!! you wear me out!!

[dnhoffman]

The better you actually get at bowling, the less you'll blame luck.

You'll learn to recognize the patterns of your leaves and why they occurred. It rarely happens now that I get a leave/split that I can't immediately tell you why it happened. My team mates with a bit less experience might say "oh you got robbed!" But I almost immediately tell them "nope, the ball just high/low/too angular/too straight/etc."

Really there's very little luck to it after a certain point, you learn what you assumed was luck in either direction actually had a mechanic behind it.

Then sometimes really weird stiff happens.... But it's DEFINITELY the exception and not the norm.

[sprocket]

I think a solid 8 could be considered bad luck but not much else. That being said I think there is plenty of luck in bowling but it is almost all GOOD. Crumbling the bucket, carrying a very high hit, missing the head pin and striking, very light hits carrying, etc. Those are all examples of GOOD luck. Anyone who complains about bad luck ought to complain equally as much about good luck or else they shouldn't gripe at all.

[circlecity]

I don't believe in good luck, bad luck, Karma, and unicorns. Everything happens for a reason.

[Aslan]

WHAT did you just say!!! OVER!! you wear me out!!

I said I agree with JAnderson (and others)…any leave is a result of how the ball hits the pins…so it's not luck based.

[sprocket]

I don't believe in good luck, bad luck, Karma, and unicorns. Everything happens for a reason.

Here's how I would define good luck: Good luck is when there is a situation with a high degree of randomness and things work out in your favor. An example would be being caught outside in a severe wind storm and there is metal, wood and plenty of other stuff flying around, all kinds of stuff is being damaged, yet you don't get hit and get to safety. Everything happens for a reason but the flying objects are extremely random and almost impossible to predict. The odds were you were going to get hit, yet you didn't. I say that is good luck.

To relate that to bowling, solid pocket hits aren't very random and the interaction of the pins is fairly predictable. There is really very little luck good or bad involved because of the lack of randomness. Maybe the solid 8 is an exception because the ball has to interact with the five pin in just the right way to cause it and you might have several seemingly identical hits yet ONE leaves the solid 8, because of a MINUTE change in how the five pin interacted with the ball.

Now, once you get to light hits the randomness of the ways the pins interact with each other increases dramatically. Some of those hits are high carrying hits but others are not, and if a good deal of those lower percentage hits are still carrying it is at least partially due to random chance and not design. It's like rolling a six on a dice six times in a row. That is random chance, not design, and like I said, I call random chance that works out in your favor, GOOD LUCK!