Horribly frustrating

[boomer]

Monthly tournament - 5 game mixed hdcp.

Bowled with my wife - it was SUPPOSED to be a light, fun, (post)Valentine's Day tournament. It ended up being anything but.

Pattern was supposed to be one of the typical league shot patterns. Plenty of oil in the middle to hold up for 5 games, good hold on the outside . . . you know, fun.

It wasn't.

Outside of 8-9 - completely out of bounds. If you were headed out, you went in the channel. If you went to play the twig, you got the 6-10 (not even the 3) until late in the 4th game. If you stayed INSIDE of 10, it was incredibly difficult to get on the right side of the headpin. The number of Brooklyns? Off the chart! LOL. Heck, we started SHOOTING for them. . . it was soooo dry inside of 10 and so slick outside of 10 . . .

Wait - that's pretty much the definition of an inverse block, right?

Why were we given an INVERSE BLOCK for a light, (post)Valentine's Mixed HDCP doubles tournament? "Oh, our machine can't handle an inverse block pattern" - which is BS. It's a Kegel 17-5400 (I snuck a photo) which is completely capable of laying down any pattern (from my research).

Those shooting straight had decent scores. Anyone (including my wife, backup with lot of forward roll) FOUGHT for several hours to get anywhere near the pocket.

(only have scores for first four - not sure where fifth went. . .but honestly who cares?)

Game 1 - what the hell am I doing? First two frames are COMPLETELY indicative. . .
Game 2 - amazing how many front-row leaves I had. Decent-er but . . .
Game 3 - Fine you want me to go Brook? I'll do that.
Game 4 - whatever.
Game 5 - I don't care - both my wife and I just want a beer. Or 10.

[Aslan]

Hard to say.

There's generally TWO significant problems you can encounter with a THS (and no, very few centers would switch to a challenge pattern or much less an inverse block on a whim. That's a 0.3% probability):

1. Did they actually oil the lanes? Usually, not a problem. But, that hard of a turn seems to indicate they hadn't oiled in 3-4 days. I've encounter that at an AMF center just after Thanksgiving weekend. Or, sometimes, you can have a center that isn't open 7 days a week...if they oil...then people bowl on it all day, then they are shut down 2 days, and maybe they don't oil the morning they open...? Some centers only oil for leagues...if they don't have a league for 3-5 days, that might explain it as well.

2. One thing...less likely...is, IF they oiled that morning and didn't oil pre-league...which I've experienced a few times...those plastic house balls push the oil all around. Oil on the outside, no high concentration in the middle, a LOT of oil pushed into your break point? Yeah. Behaves the same way as an "inverse block". It's why 170-200 average bowlers show up to open bowling and struggle to beat 160 and maintain a consistent shot.

Those would be my best guesses.

[boomer]

Hi

1. Yes they did.
2. We were on fresh lanes. The center actually opened up for us a bit early so we could get in and register and whatnot so we could get started at 11:00am.

Evidently the kid running the machine - it was his first time (?!?) and he had no idea what he was doing. :/ THAT isn't going to happen again.

The delineation going down 10 (and down 8 on the left side) was SO explicit and dramatic . . . in games 1 and 2 we were being very specific to try to get a line. I could get it out to 11-12 and it would come back; but if I got it out to 9-10, it was gone. ZERO in between. If I wanted to play inside, my only option was to try to get it DOWN the lane and out to 12-15 - but that just wasn't possible. It would hook way too early. I even tried to start at the left gutter but still couldn't get it DOWN the lane and over.

Meh, whatever. The pro-shop heard us and is taking care of it. They agree that it should be challenging, but accomplishable. It wasn't their fault - and they'll be on it next time. Nobody wants to lose customers. . .

[Aslan]

Sounds like the most logical cause was the new employee doing something wrong. I'm not sure how those machines work, but I 'thought' they cleaned the lanes, then applied the fresh oil pattern. If its a new user and he hits the button to oil but not clean...or vice versa...maybe that would cause the issues. And I'm pretty sure you can program different patterns...I don't know how easy it is to make a mistake.

But I doubt the center went out of their way to cause complete chaos. Bad for business. Unless its a challenge/PBA experience league where bowlers are participating specifically for that challenge.

[boomer]

absolutely - nobody (with half a bit of sanity) thinks the center did it deliberately.

So - the interface on the 17-5400 series of Kegel machines is pretty straightforward. All they really had to do was to click on "Start" and it should have gone. However, that said, there obviously was the capacity for mistakes. From my reading of the manuals, there were multiple violations of my basic rule of "Make people go past the RIGHT thing to get to the WRONG thing" - it would have been easy to screw things up.

[Aslan]

The center I bowl at now, they have a machine that goes lane to lane to lane robotically.

I was used to the technician having to physically move it from one lane to the next...then it would go down and back on it's own...then he'd have to move it to the next lane.

It makes me wonder how long that technology has been commonplace and maybe I just didn't pay enough attention??

[boomer]

Ummmm, Kegel has several of those - they're the "Walker" I guess you'd call it a mod. You've got the Atlas and the Atlas Walker.

The walker line has been around since about 91 . . . which blows my mind. I hadn't seen any until WAY later than that.