GambleAB and Bowling
I got in touch with GambleAB today on AIM and we decided to meet up this evening for some food, trivia and bowling. I left my apartment around 10 PM for his place kinda on the edge of Summerlin. He’s living there with veeRob, buxx, micon and MaconMarc, although I don’t think micon and Marc are permanent residents there.
After I picked him up, we went to this place called Buffalo Wild Wings Grill and Bar on Hualapai Way kinda near the western end of Tropicana — a few miles west of the strip. I don’t really eat wings (!), so I just ordered some shrimp/chicken thing while AB got wings+some other stuff. He played a bunch of video poker while we just chatted. I told him about some of the new projects that I’m interested in doing this summer and he seemed to think they’d be fairly popular, so that’s good news. For those of you who don’t know Aaron, he’s generally candid so I think he would tell me if he didn’t think they’d succeed. After an hour or so, Aaron’s girlfriend stopped by after work and got some food for herself.
After the bar, we went to the Suncoast Bowling Lanes. It’s a pretty big alley kinda right in the middle of the Suncoast, an off-strip casino that I hadn’t been to before. It was pretty nice from what I saw and the lanes were great. At first, we decided to do two games each. I’m a truly terrible bowler, although I used to be good. When I was in high school, I used to bowl pretty consistently in the 150-180 range. I bowled over 200 a few times. But in the last 7 years or so, I’ve let myself slide. I barely bowled in college and since poker became a big part of my life, I’ve basically never gone bowling. I went a few times with law school classmates last fall in Atlanta and I was just terrible. I couldn’t break 100. I then just went to practice when I had some free time this spring and I still couldn’t get any sort of accuracy going.
Anyway, Aaron asked if I wanted to put some action on the bowling. Considering that he had his own shoes, ball and bowled in a league, there was no way I would bowl him straight up. I told him I’d rather not because I knew if I got lucky with regards to accuracy, I would look like I was Phil Ivey’ing him. But he offered 50 points even after I explained all of this, so I was like, whatever, I’ll do 50 points for $20. So we bowled and I bowled a 100 (about what I expected) and he bowled a 102 (way below what he thought he would bowl). The next game we lower the line to 30. I thought it was fair because I expected to bowl around a 90 (80 being the lowest I’d go and 100 being around the highest I’d go). So that game Aaron bowled a 93 (!) and I bowled a 110-115 (somewhere around there). I went on a X / / run at the end that raised my score by a bit. But Aaron was truly bowling terribly. Multiple 0s on the first shot, etc. I felt bad, but I still thought he was a better bowler than me. He almost certainly is although he was way off tonight.
So we decide to bowl one last game. At this point, my thumb was killing me. I’m not sure what was going on, but I was doing something to irritate it. I don’t have any pictures, but Aaron and his girlfriend can attest to the swelling. It hurt, but I was going to give Aaron a chance to get even. So we did $40 and 15 points. I thought it was fair considering that he was a better bowler and I was bowling in pain. So what happened? Well, I somehow managed to go on the run of my life and bowl 4 straight strikes to start the third game. It was basically over at that point, but I slowed down a bit and finished up with a 185 — by far the highest I’ve bowled since I was like a junior in high school almost 10 years ago. Aaron bowled like a 115 and it was good game. I would have kept going and bowled him even, but my thumb was throbbing and really really hurt. So I called it quits and Aaron and his girlfriend bowled one more game before we left.
It was a fun night and I’m thinking I might go get some bowling equipment. I want to bowl more, but I would prefer to avoid the thumb issue. Remember to look for the final table webcast tomorrow!! I plan on being down there for at least part of it.
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